The Locked Room
by Garmonbozia
Summary: Jim could tell Mycroft everything. Where the bombs are made and the bodies buried, where the fires start and the funds are sent. But you only ever get what you pay for. - Set in between torture sessions, after Belgravia.
1. Fair Exchange: Jim

Oh, here he bloody comes. His Highness.

This is my favourite part, you know. What will follow on is fairly standard, but I like this bit; right before he comes into me, he stops and takes a long, deep breath. He's just a shadow through frosted glass, but I can see it, and it's my very favourite part. It gives me enough strength to look like I'm being strong.

And I am, by the way, being periodically tortured, so strong is in pretty short supply. I need that deep breath of his as much as he does.

Then the door starts to open. As he comes in, I look past him. The P.A. is outside, where she always is. Holding his coffee and briefcase. She looks unruffled and, indeed, unrufflable, but she doesn't fool me. No, she's raging. She hates me. Afraid for him and hates me for it. That's a little extra strength too. So I look past him so he can notice and say, "I like her. Why does she never come in? Does she not talk?" While the door swings closed, I wave out at her, "Hello." But the door closes and that blessed distraction is gone again.

Just me and Frosty now.

"You know," I tell him, "When I said I'd give it all up if you just brought me the _interesting_ Holmes, I meant it."

Mycroft settles himself. That chair opposite me isn't any more comfortable than the one I'm sitting on but, given he's not shackled to his, I'm still jealous.

He says, "I know."

"Ah, you'll come round."

"Oh?"

"Well, if everything's still running to schedule there's a little village school in Wales goes up in smoke next week. How's the country coping, by the way, with the spate of random and senseless violence and misfortune befalling the very weakest in society?"

And he, quite brutally, quite openly, "The country doesn't know."

He's making sure everything is underreported. So the nursing home in the Shetlands that mysteriously exploded even though it was on electric and not gas and the children's playground that was shot up worse than the south of Los Angeles one night, those have been played down, and nobody's getting a chance to panic. But he can only keep me here so long before word still starts to get about. I'm going to make his precious nation so paranoid, so heart-scared, feed the redtop tabloids into such a fecking frenzy that no decent person will cross their door, and he knows that.

He says, "Where in Wales?"

I make a show of thinking hard, of having forgotten. I puff up my cheeks and blow the breath out long, shaking my head. "Jesus… Hold on, it'll come to me. I put it in place, God's sake. It'll come to me… Anyway, like I say, that's only if the trains are still running on time, as it were. Me being incarcerated and all, I've no way of knowing. No way of controlling it anymore."

That last part is complete crap. I've left everything in very good hands, hands I trust. Hands that have a list, and that know it's one a week for the first three weeks, and two each week thereafter, and if it goes on much longer than that just to come and get me.

I know my limits.

And Elder Holmes knows crap when he hears it. He knows better than to just ask again, and he knows better than to send for those boys who come in and ask harder than him.

He knows, even if he doesn't know how, that I can call off anything I want anytime I want. I've been telling him that. Two occasions so far he's come in here for a little chat. Two occasions I've offered to call it off. Two occasions he's refused to give me anything in return, and aren't there fourteen old-age pensioners, three children and seven parents who could all thank him for it?

He says again, "Where in Wales?"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I feel so stupid. I mean, I had it written down on the list and everything and I must have read it over a dozen times and here I am completely lost… It's those Welsh names, though, they're too strange. Irish names are bad, but the Welsh have it down to a fine art…"

He just sits there. Doesn't move, doesn't pound his fist down on the table, doesn't rage at me, has nothing scathing to say, no awful leverage to pull out and change the game. He just sits there. He knows what I want, see. He couldn't help but no. I've told him outright, oh, quite a number of times.

He says, wound up tight, "Where in Wales?"

And this time it's just his way of saying, _What do you want to know?_

"What age were you when he was born?"

"…Seven."

Oh yes. Suddenly it's all worth it. Every cut and bruise and graze is redeemed in that one word, that one little fact. It's beautiful. It's really, really beautiful, and though I try my very best not to, I end up laughing.

"_School_ age," I tell him. "And how did you feel? The mists are clearing, by the way. I'm getting the stench of the Irish Sea, but how did you feel, getting a little brother? Excited? Jealous?"

He takes another one of those long deep breaths, nostrils flaring. I don't know if he's fighting the past or fighting killing me. Whatever it is, I don't care, I just love it.

You don't understand, you can't possibly, what it's like to suffer everything the rather inventive gents from Vauxhall Cross can come up with, all in anticipation of something you can only really guess is coming. He might have been stronger than this. I never thought so and it wasn't all that likely, but he might have been. Me and the schoolchildren of Laver Bread Land might have suffered in vain for a long, long time. You can't understand what I'm feeling right now.

"Yes," he concedes. "Both. I thought… I thought I would be able to… to teach him things."

"But you were old enough to appreciate being an only child too, I'll bet. Resent him at all, for that?"

Oh, I am going to get _all_ seven shades of shite knocked out of me tonight, and all seven bells to boot. It's all over his face. The first order out of his mouth on the far side of that door is going to be that I am to be kept pretty much senseless for a number of hours if not days.

Looking at him, right now, when he's shifting in his chair and hating himself for giving me even that much, it's really very hard to care.

He finally deigns to answer me. "Yes. Later on."

"Aberystwyth," I tell him. "That's definitely the nearest city. I'm trying to think north or south from there. So when did you start to notice he was… what's the polite word… _special_?"

He tries, bless his heart, raising that eyebrow of his at me, "You find something special about Sherlock?"

It's a brave attempt, no doubt, but I laugh. "Or was it Swansea?"

"It was early on. He'd spend hours…" He pauses here, as if he's afraid, as if he's just realized what he's doing. But he's started, so maybe he feels he has to finish. He continues, "…studying the skeletons of leaves."

"Botany was the first science, then?"

"No, he hated them." There is no way for me to express the scope and scale of my joy when I see his eyes drift. His gaze turn inward. Memory supersede me. "None of them were the same, you see. No uniformity. He never understood uniqueness."

"There's an irony there I probably don't need to point out."

"Quite."

"South from Aberystwyth, I think… What about animals? Pets, bird-watching, that sort of thing?"

"Insects. If you looking for the _first science_, you might say entomology. Early drawings were in naturally childish proportion, but very detailed. Spiders, millipedes, anything he could keep in a jar."

Oh, he's getting careful now. Look at him, breaking it into neat facts, phrasing it like an encyclopaedia entry. Have to watch that. I don't want him controlling what he tells me, that's not the point of this at all.

"I _think_ it's south, anyway…"

"And a frog." Oh, God, I could survive _weeks_ on how fast he offered that up, how quickly he's learned to invest in this little game. "Raised it from a tadpole. Watched it through every stage of its life cycle. Kept it to its natural end. Buried it."

"Did Froggy have a name?"

"No."

There's not much to do there but nod. If you'd asked me to guess the answer, that's what I would have said.

Anyway, we're live now. The game, as they say, is afoot, and I need to keep it going.

I sit back and consider my next gambit a long moment before I commit to it.

"In a small, narrow mid-terrace house, in a little street off Bayham Road, there lives a very talented and not very famous bomb-maker named Yusuf Shikra. You and him should probably have a chat about the kind of people he works for." Holmes stares at me in absolute shock. I've _no_ idea why. After all, didn't I tell him I'd talk? Didn't I tell him I'd give him every possible chance? And I'm a fair and lenient source; I ask for staggeringly little in return. "Now tell me how your brother was at school."

He looks away. Props his face up on his fist, like he's trying to hold his mouth closed. "No," he says through it. Making no effort to disguise anymore the fact that he's deeply uncomfortable. He's starting to understand just what he's let himself in for now. What he doesn't understand yet is that we've started now, and he can't go back. I've just given him the first golden egg with Shikra. He knows there's a hell of a lot more where that came from, and wasn't it easy to get? Man in his position, and he does so very much for the people he represents, this is too good to pass up.

That's us Catholic boys all over. All those people, all that time and energy, my entire childhood teaching me to fight temptation, and here I stand making it my middle name.

"Y'know, the more I think the word 'Swansea', the more it's ringing bells…"

Mycroft sits up, lifts his face off his hand. Hissing in breath. "He got in trouble," he begins. "First day."

Forgive us our trespasses.

"What for?"

"Wouldn't say his prayers at assembly. Four years old. I doubt he even knew he was arguing for God as the scientific obsolete."

_Ora pro nobis peccatoribus_.

"Llanfarian. Am I pronouncing that right? It's got two Ls at the start of it. How do I say that? yLanfarian? Yeah, anyway, that's the one. It's a primary school with two Ls at the start of it."

And with that, Holmes stands up and goes to the door. It's opened for him just before he gets there.

I call after, "See you soon!" And I nod at the assistant again, "Bring her again, I like her."

He doesn't even answer me. Doesn't even say goodbye. I can't tell you how good that feels. And you'd think, maybe, the edge would go off the feeling just a little bit when the door doesn't even get a chance to close. Before Mycroft and his little girlfriend have even moved on, there are two rather larger, very Spooks-looking gentlemen standing in front of them. Apparently he didn't even have to give the order. They have anticipated his whim, and done it very well.

You'd think it would take the edge off. God knows I did.

But I don't care. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. We're talking now. Channels of communication are open. I don't care how much it hurts. I tip my head back. If my arms weren't bound behind me, I'd hold them open and leave myself so entirely vulnerable, just so that they'd know, so _he_ would know, there's nothing they can do to me anymore. My victory is already assured.

Me and you, Mycroft. We are nearing our limits. And Christ, what a shock to find that we are limited. I, however, am not quite there yet.

"C'mon ahead, lads," I tell them. "Do what thou wilt."


	2. Monarchy: Mycroft

There are three sealed and guarded doors between the real world and James Moriarty. I pass through the first without waiting for Anthea. I wouldn't blame her, you know, if she made that her excuse to go no farther. But she follows. Not a single word, but she follows. There is a difference in her walk and how she holds herself, though. At the second door, it begins to make sense to me, and I realize that, in another life, as different people, she might ask whether I'm alright.

In this, we pass through the third door and she takes from me my overcoat, and that is all.

But I do wish she'd stand away from the door. He's waiting, in there. I'm on the other side of darkened glass and already I know he's waiting, that his eyes are on me, and that after last time he'll be looking for her when the door opens. And I don't want to give him the satisfaction.

She seems aware of this, and stands her ground. As though this in itself were a sort of victory. I'm afraid I can't quite make the logic follow.

Before anything can be done about it one of my own men arrives with the key. This may be a borrowed facility, but I've taken no chances with my staff. This is a trusted, tested gentleman who opens the door. Can't quite remember his name, but I've read his file and I'm comfortable to have him here. He rather quails, though, avoids eye contact. I'm well aware I must look quite disagreeable right now. One can only hope he has the strength of character to realize it's not him personally that I object to, but rather the fact that this door is about to open.

He looks to me for the nod. I pause a moment and clear my throat.

And God, the pain of hearing Moriarty's mocking echo of the sound. There is, he is telling me, only a door between us. No more than that.

The door opens. He's leaning out of his chair to see around it, appropriating something like a child's glee. Muttering, "Did he bring her, did he, did he bring her-_he did_! Hello. What's your name?" The door closes again, and I'm grateful. Terrible feeling Anthea might have been about to answer him. I take my seat. He says, "I'm getting her number when you let me out of here, y'know."

A cheap tactic. He intends for me to ask why I would ever let him out, and in that way to control the topic of conversation from the off. It's too neat, too obvious. Perhaps they've beaten a few of the sharper edges off him. He's _looking_ the worse for wear, this is certain. It's gone a little beyond the usual bruising this time. That, however, would truly be a pity. I'd rather hoped we might get a while longer out of him. We'd been making such progress.

"How did you call it off?"

"Oh, straight to bloody business… You know, it's not like prison, they don't time you." I don't deign to respond. Ultimately, Moriarty sighs. Rolls his eyes as if we might have such fun if only I'd play along. "How'd I call what off?"

"Aberystwyth."

"Llanfarian."

I concede, "Llanfarian."

There is a hesitation in him, and for an awful moment I suspect he may not even try to answer, may not even be glib or joke or rattle off some cryptic rant or even say a word to me again. Then the first glimmer of a smile ghosts his face. I might almost breathe out relief. That would be a mistake, though. "You're right," he says, "It's a bit of a weird one. For instance, there's only you and me in here. And then the recordings, but you vet everybody that hears the recordings, don't you? There's the camera, but that's a closed circuit, and I imagine only a very select few have access. And barring my daily visitors, who are, by the way, getting a bit creative and unwelcome, I don't see anybody. It's a real fecking mystery, when you think about it. A locked-room mystery. You know who's good at locked-room mysteries?"

He makes no effort to disguise the hopelessness of this particular gambit. There's no shame, no giveaway, in laughing at it. A bold and brave attempt, no doubt, but utterly hopeless.

"What?" he grins. "I was going to say Chesterton. Oh, did you think I meant your brother? Oh, well… Actually, now that you mention it-"

"Who's Chesterton?"

"Spoilsport."

"Who's Chesterton?"

"Chesterton? Nobody important. I was only joking." No. No, there isn't a word of all of this, from the first moment, that has been a joke, or a slip, or a mistake. For all its bizarre banality, every syllable has been perfectly calculated. I ask him again who Chesterton is. Moriarty rolls his head back on his shoulders, groaning, "Fuck's sake! Joke's no good if you have to _explain_ it." He looks back up, looks me in the eye , frustrated. As if I should know this. "Chesterton. _Chesterton_. G.K. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the author, the last fiction your brother ever read, aged fourteen, wrote all the bloody locked-room _mysteries_."

His voice hardened as he went on.

And I did know that. I knew that, very far away, long ago, I knew who Chesterton was and what that meant.

"How would you know that?" I say.

He pretends not to have heard me. "You remember him. He said that thing about thieves actually having the greatest respect for property, um… 'they only wish to possess it so that they may respect it more perfectly'."

A complete non-sequitur. The quotation is witty, but not famous. There's no logic. But then again the logic doesn't matter. That his last speech jarred with what went before was intentional. Because now I have a choice. I can pursue my former course, to discover who could have told him about Sherlock as a teenager.

Or I can ask him why he would mention thieves.

"Oh, because I love them," he says, like I've just brought up his very greatest passion. "Aw, thieves are the best. The good ones, though. Not the mercenaries. No, the real ones, that just take the things they want. They're the best. If somebody comes to me and says, I don't know, mad example, I want Caravaggio's Magdalene to hang in my study, I will help them get it, no bother. Thieves are my favourites. There's a woman works for me actually, she's got a job lined up. And I gave her some ideas, but I'm dying to see if she pulls it off, so-"

Ah. This week's distraction. The one I have to fight him for. I was wondering how long it would take us to get here.

"Everything might go a little easier for you if you just told me who and where."

"Oh, I would, only I'm starting to get these terrible black spots on the old memory where your mates keep _hitting me_…" I try, without saying anything, to let him know just how terribly bored I am with all this double-talk. He is, however, undaunted. "I thought of _you_, though, I remember that. That I should tell you because it was somebody you know and… Nah, sorry, it's gone."

This time, at least, I have been able to prepare for him. Our last discussion was unnecessarily free-flowing, too much given up in exchange for too little. Only the value of the experience redeemed it in any way. This time, I am at least ready. "One can only assume you know exactly what would help you remember."

"I _do_, come to think of it." He only smiles. Only in a small and mistrustful way. I had expected him to glitter. As if I had accepted his terms, and along with them defeat. This is a much more measured, wary reaction. "Tell me about your parents."

During our first meeting, he had a stab at a few of these questions. I thought they were ploys. I believed he never expected me to answer, only to somehow shake me with the deliberately personal tone. There is now a knot in my chest as I craft an answer which tells me there's more than that.

"Sherlock was really too young to have properly known Father. And there wasn't a lot of talk about him after. Mother was… difficult. Strong, yes, and intelligent but… _unavailable_."

"Tell me about Christmas," he says.

I say, "No." Too quickly, before I've really thought about it, just 'No'. "Something else."

I'm surprised, but he accepts this. "A birthday, then. Doesn't really matter." So I tell him the frog, the frog with no name, that it finally died on Sherlock's birthday. How Mother threw it in with the rubbish and he fetched it out for a burial, but I get this far and Moriarty begins to laugh. I look up. "You're lying." Yes. But he's not supposed to know that. His laughter grows until it doubles him over. "You're lying and you _actually_ thought it was going to work! How much time did you invest practicing that story? It's shite, by the way. That wasn't four sentences and I stopped counting inconsistencies." He laughs until he's pushing tears from the corners of his eyes, hysterical. "Aw, Jesus, you'll have to do better than that if you want to stop this heist going ahead."

I answer him with a shrug. "A heist. No casualties, civilian or otherwise, all parties reimbursed by insurers…"

He shrugs, nods along, says, "Global press coverage," like it's just another item on the list. And when I look up, "Well, after last time. What did you expect? You told me you were keeping it all hushed up, and I don't want it hushed up."

"You're bluffing."

"Maybe. When I remember what she's stealing I suppose we'll know for sure." Cuffed hands keep him from rubbing his eyes. He squeezes them shut, turns his head against his shoulder to scratch, but it's not enough. "I'm sorry. I'd be thinking, but I've got Land of Hope and Glory stuck in my head. There was this fella, where I grew up. He was from the North. And any time you heard that music on TV, end of the Royal Variety, usually, he sang it as '_Land of shi-ite and sna-tters…_' Snatters is like Irish for snot, see, and, well, it was the eighties, so…"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it doesn't make any difference when I tell stories and you weren't talking."

And so I breathe very deeply. There are quite a number of options, but I'm left casting about for one which is both viable and agreeable.

"Age fifteen," I say, very slowly. There is guilt, and the guilt is made all the more terrible by a strange sensation that, if he only knew, Sherlock would forgive me. "That was the first time Sherlock couldn't think of anything he wanted for his birthday. Nothing. He thought about it, too, thought for weeks, and Mother was very determined that if he wanted nothing he would receive nothing."

Moriarty sits forward. Quietly, as though not to disturb me; "She's definitely not travelling for work. I remember her saying she'd run out of Air Miles. So it's London…"

"And that's exactly what happened. He got nothing." That's not exactly true. I gave him a card. He looked at it as if he didn't really know what it was for. I don't think he kept it for more than an hour. The whole event bothered me a great deal more than it ever bothered him.

He's 'getting something', by the way. Moriarty, I mean. Slowly, in fragments, something's coming to him. The pretence is sickening. Worse still is knowing there's nothing I can do about it. "Jewellery?" he's murmuring to himself, "Diamonds, maybe? Fuck's '_Jubilee'_ got to do with anything? Tube line, maybe?" Worse still, worse still. Worst of all is the sensation of having absolutely nothing. I have thought of every counter-measure and found none even worth trying. The parameters of a normal mind aren't broad enough. He thinks around us and faster than we can think.

Damn him.

Damn him eternally, but then, brightly, glimmering, _something_; "Chesterton."

Moriarty stops muttering. "I beg your pardon?"

"Chesterton. The only reason he ever read them, fiction and all as they were, was because the answer was there. The deliberate intention of those novels is for the answer to be perfectly plain, every single clue given to the reader that they could possibly need. He read them as case studies. The answer in plain sight. Or, in other words, to return to my first question, how could you ever have known my brother's reading habits as a teenager?"

"Ah, now, that wasn't quite your first question."

"Answer it, nonetheless."

He looks away. Won't meet my eyes. He sniffs before he answers. "You're not my only source." One less cautious might almost dare to think I have him on the back foot. Unfortunately, he doesn't intend to leave it at that. "Anyway, it couldn't be much of a dilemma for you. I'm sure you've got it well figured out by now." Before he'll turn his head, just his eyes slide back. Slyly watching. Forcing me to admit I'm none the wiser while still pretending not to notice. Singing 'God Save The Queen' under his breath. '_Frustrate their politics_, _confound their knavish tricks_.'

We're having two different conversations, now that I think of it. One about Sherlock, one about the heist. This last is designed to lead me back to the latter. Land Of Hope And Glory, God Save The Queen…

I am absolutely certain when I say, "No. It's not possible."

"Oh, nothing's impossible. The people I work with, impossible is just an invitation." This time he grins. He knows I thought I had him. "I had to be able to guarantee global coverage, after all."

He's left me with no choice. We both know it. I can't describe to you the sound of his laughter, of his joy, when I ask, "What do you want?"

The laughter trails off just enough to let him breathe, hooked over the table. A moment later he wheezes, "About time."

"Enough. What do you want?"

"Oh, say it again." I won't. A moment later he goes on. "Well, since you were so good as to ask. Twice. And believe me, it's a feeling I'll carry to the grave-"

"Sooner than you think."

On a heartbeat, he stops laughing and only burns. "I wouldn't threaten me. I know I'm chained down in a locked-room but I've got mysterious ways. Anyway, I'm trying to be nice to you. Don't threaten somebody who can be very nice or very, very not-nice, alright?" It's the absolute shift of mood, rather than what he actually says, that leaves me silent. "Now what I was trying to get to before you interrupted to threaten me is that I actually won't ask for anything this time. You can have this one for free, Elder Holmes."

"Most obliging. A show of good faith, is it?"

"You might say that. Definitely a show of something. Of course, if you choose to have it called off, you'll never find that other source of mine."

Oh.

Oh, no. We haven't been having two different conversations. Not at all. We spoke about Sherlock and a person who knew him, and we spoke about a potential theft and a thief.

Oh, damn him. Damn him eternally.

I stand and start for the door. "Call it off."

"Yes, sir," he shouts after me, laughing. "Whatever you say, sir. I'll give her your regards when I see her, sir."

The laughter grows wild. He pays no attention to Anthea. The door closes, but I can hear it still, and hear rising out of it, loud and almost drunken, "_Land of shite and snatters_…"

I can still hear him. Of course I can. There is only a door between us.

[For Kaelir, sevenpercent, and Fergie, without whom this wouldn't have happened and the story would have stayed a one shot. Special mention to sevenpercent for the spooky-moment - I had been considering alternating with Mycroft, but was a little wary of the idea. This is my first ever attempt at Mycroft even as a primary character, never mind his actual personal voice. I'll admit, it doesn't come as easily to me as my own dear Wild Irish. Naturally, then, any responses to it are more than welcome. But thank you so much anyway, folks; the reviews have been such a boost.

Hearts (and I really, really mean those hearts)

Sal.]


	3. Captivity: Jim

He's late. Or he's early. They knocked me out a couple of days ago and I lost track and the bastards won't even tell me what day it is. I know what they're doing, of course. Or what they _think_ they're doing anyway. And I'll tell you something, honestly, I'm insulted.

Their theory, bless the hollows where their simple hearts used to be, is that if I don't know what day it is I can't possibly negotiate based on a series of prearranged strikes against the civil liberties of the British public. Now, there are multiple levels here where I could possibly be insulted. For one, it shows a disturbing lack of faith my capacities. But that doesn't insult me. No, I just worry for them, underestimating me like that. Or I could be insulted, very easily, by the cheapness of the whole charade, and just as easily by the implication that I'm the kind of person that has to stick to rigid dates like some hopeless OCD detective. But I'm not. I'm a kind and forgiving soul when it comes to these sorts of slights.

No, what insults me, and insults me deeply, even to the core of my being, is them thinking I could ever be so _unfair_.

How could a job go ahead before I've given Holmes the chance to call it off?

It's just not _sporting_.

I think he can tell when he finally appears that I'm really not even in the mood, after that. If he can't, my opening line probably helps.

"Frankly you could have brought me his secret diary today and I wouldn't much care to talk. You'll have to be _really_ fucking interesting, today…"

He flashes that smug smile of his for all of a millisecond. "I'm afraid it doesn't quite work like that."

Oh, dear. Oh, Face of Brylcreem, no. No, I'm not quite so weak as all that yet. I'm still more than aware of how this works. Someday, when I'm one big scar and practically broken, maybe then a gambit like that one will have a chance. But right now I still know who's really in control here. I toy with the idea of biting my own tongue out just to teach him a fecking lesson. But, as I say, we're not quite so close to the end as all that.

Anyway, all I really have to do is sit here and look at him. I smile, as if I expect him to say something witty and sparkling. It's a hell of a pretence. I'm proud I've still got it in me, if I'm honest.

Holmes, however, seems almost ready for this. He continues, as if I'm doing nothing out of the ordinary. "We caught up with your friend, by the way. The thief. She was most helpful." I nod along, as if I'm interested, as if I believe a fuckign word of this shite. He sees me thinking that and I get another single-frame smile. "If you're wondering how we found her, you're not my only source. Oh, by the way, she knew you wouldn't believe me. She gave me a message to pass on." He removes a little notebook from his jacket , flips it open and reads, "'Sebastian says world peace is breaking out without you.' Does that mean anything to you?"

Means I'm trying not to laugh when I'm _trying_ to be at my grumpiest with him. Means, sobering thought, that he really did speak to my thief.

"Means you didn't get her or you wouldn't be passing messages."

"We didn't need to get her. She was happy to help. A weight off her shoulders, I thought."

"I'd look twice at anything she gave you. Really. You can consider that a totally friendly warning, too, because I've been on the other end of that and it's hell when she gets wrathful."

"You have an awful lot of faith in people you haven't seen for weeks."

"The woman wouldn't dare; she knows I'm getting out of here."

The smile lingers a little this time. "Even I don't know that yet."

Very much against my will, it cheers me up hearing him say that. Like he's got any choice in the matter. He can no more hold me here when I'm finished than he can make me talk before it. I just can't help but love letting him labour under these assumptions. I love when we're talking about things and all the truth is lying in front of him, and he's too busy looking for meaningless information from me. Everything he really needs to know, we've already discussed. He sees none of it.

It's his own fault, after all. I've told him and told him he'd get a lot more out of these little sessions if he brought his brother. Sherlock would have had this all straightened out by now.

I sigh, "If you don't-get her again, tell her not to worry about world peace. I hope she didn't really believe that, y'know. Could start a panic in the criminal classes. Let them all know there's plenty still cooking."

"Ah, so we are to have a game today, then."

"Well, you've come all this way." And I have to be fair to him, whatever he might be to me. Otherwise I'm as much of a monster as he is. "And it's a real beauty. It would be a shame to take my personal rage out on such a lovely job. This week, we're combining the impact of the crude early attacks, those big broad strokes, and last week's potential for publicity, that sort of detail work. If you were sitting on this side of the table you'd look upon it as a work of genius."

Watch him. Watch him close. His hand isn't moving, but he's still taking notes, and I swear, if you look in his eyes you can see the word 'megalomaniac' being written. I've watched people write that word before, thinking they were doing it beneath my notice, and I swear to you, he is mentally writing the word 'megalomaniac'. And something else too. Might be 'delusions of grandeur'. I don't usually hear one without the other.

This is something else I allow to lift my spirits, oh, just that little half-an-inch; I know what he's thinking. Better yet, I made him think it. It's all very well _knowing_ I'm in control, but sometimes I know it the same I know there's a wall in China. But all it takes is one little trick like that and I know it like I know there's a small and perfectly straight scar behind my left ear. I could tell you the story, but it's house-brick boring compared to what's about to happen in this room.

The job is a diamond. And I have suffered. I'll draw blood before he's paid for this one.

By the way, I know I'm rambling on a bit, but it's because he won't ask the obvious question. Expecting me just to go on ahead here and spill everything.

I give him my interested smile again. Work for it, you Norse-looking streak of piss.

He breathes in, rolls his eyes to God for strength and sighs out, "Go on then. Describe to me this _masterpiece_…"

"Mountjoy, Maghaberry, Cornton Vale, Strangeways, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs and… Now, hold on, there's another."

"Oh, don't start this again." But you can tell, the mention of all these famous and violent prisons in every corner of his commonwealth, he's shaking already. Fair play to him, trying to hide it but… Ah, you're not here. No point trying to explain to you the fun to be had watching

"No, seriously, I'm … Oh, Cox's Farm! HMP Swansea. This is where Swansea came into it. I knew I was getting Swansea from somewhere…"

"What about them?"

"The single maddest and most violent offender from each is going to find themselves back on the streets by Friday lunchtime unless you do some damn fine work in this here room."

Watch him. Watch his bloody eyes, he's about to try and say no to me again, oh, God, come on, do it, fucking do it, I could use a laugh. Say no so I can watch your worst-case scenario crumble around you. And then you can try and lie to me. And I swear to Christ, mention that fucking frog again and I'll get your little secretary to kiss one when I'm out of here and I'll make sure there's photos for you, _come_ on, Mycroft, make a play. Make a play. Remember who's running this show. Make a play.

"What do you want?"

"Well, let me think… I won't lie to you, you've a lot of making up to do before we can even consider moving on to the free and understanding exchange of information. There is one thing that ought to cover both. And it's coming sooner or later, so maybe you'll want to get it over with. Shall we give it a go?"

He knows. He already knows. "And this cure-all topic would be?" He would say delaying the blow. I would say prolonging his own misery.

"The Opiate Wars." He hasn't even got a 'No' for me. He shakes his head. His expression is blank, but it's no poker face. No, he just feels that way. Everything just drains out of him. I watch it go, all slurping down out his feet like I pulled out the plug and now I've left him cold and exposed. "I told you before not to be nasty to somebody nastier than you are. You were well warned. And now this is where you've left us. You've nobody to blame but yourself, Mycroft. Let's start with when exactly. I've got it down to the university years, responsible for the drop-out. That was a terrible waste of an intellect, you know. Not that he needs a qualification to show how smart he is, but it would be nice for him. Doctor Holmes. Professor Holmes. Did you know I'm a professor? Mathematics. It probably didn't come up in your research, it's under a different name, but it's still me. _I_ still know, y'know? Sorry, how'd I get onto this? What was I-? Oh aye, who first rubbed your brother's long fine nose in it? Or did he go straight to shooting up? Who or when, y'know, give me one and I can get the other… Mycroft? You're looking a bit pale on it, there. Are you feeling alright? You… You didn't think I didn't know about this, did you?"

I know I shouldn't laugh at him when he's looking so broken. I think the fact that I try to hold it is worse. It keeps breaking out and sort of crippling me, seizing me up when I try to breathe through it. I end up doing that silent shaking thing until I can hardly move.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Holmes stands up. Starts for the door.

"Jesus! Fuck's sake, hold on a minute! If you're going to charge out every time I say something personal this is going to take _forever_."

He glares a moment before he turns again.

"So that's a yes please on the Barabbas deal then? All those murdering mental cases roaming the islands?"

He manages to summon up one last smile from somewhere. You have to respect that. I like a man who can push on through. Through a bitten tongue, through the urge to almost-certainly kill, if not order the death. Through deep, personal insult.

It's not that I brought up his dear little brother's former junkiehood. Junkiedom? Junkidity? Is there an accepted term for that? Anyway, no, that's just a fact. That's a thing that happened and no denying it. Mycroft Holmes is a man who deals in the concrete, in the absolute, and I will have no cheap denials from him. But by even reminding him of it, by implying that he would know something of its very origins, I implied that he did nothing to prevent the aforementioned, termless condition.

An eye for an eye.

"Not even a little scrap for old Jim?"

"Why should I? I think I can manage lockdown for seven offenders until the end of the week."

"And you think that'll work, do you?"

He nods. Looks perfectly sure, actually.

I smile. "See you Friday, then."

This time he gets as far as putting his hand on the door before he has to stop again. He just can't leave me, bless. "Oh, by the way. You were unconscious for all of about four minutes. It's still Tuesday."

Bastard.

I could call him worse than that, but I'll keep it to myself. No pride to be taken in calling him names, not right now. You just have to wonder why he does it. Why he torments me. Surely he knows he's never going to be the one to suffer for it? Not _directly_, anyway…


	4. Physical: Mycroft

Wednesday was quiet. And Thursday. None of the prisons in question reported any unusual activity and none of the selected prisoners was found to have any knowledge at all of what had been promised. This morning was quiet. I was almost willing to believe it had all been a bluff. That he was out of cards.

Now Friday lunchtime has come and gone. I've returned. He said I would. It galls me to fulfil a madman's prophecy, but it's too important.

He's leaning as I open the door, slyly smiling, gauging me. "How many did we get?" He sounds just exactly like a child, asking if I've brought him sweets. "Come on, out of seven. Well, there's his grim, set mouth, that's one, and one for each of his brows, and one for that awful little place where they meet now… Four? Four out of seven?"

"As though you didn't know."

"Me? How would I know? Mountjoy. Did we get yer-man out of Mountjoy? I told them to be bloody sure we got him. I told them, I said, I won't be embarrassed in my own home town, so-"

"Enough!"

In that small, hard room, it echoes. Too loud, too sudden, too much of a victory for him. That was a mistake. At least he doesn't smile. Like a child again, he quails from the sound, lowers his head. Looks as if he might be about to say 'Sorry, sir'. Instead he says, "So four, then. Out of seven." It's not even a question anymore. Four. Four violent criminals vanished from custody and heaven knows where now. Four. My outburst was an admission. My silence is confirmation. He nods to himself and then goes on. "Mountjoy, though. You have to tell me that one, I can't guess that."

"Oh, I'm sure one of your soldiers will report… Although, after today's events, this really might be the time to tell how you're doing that."

He pauses a moment, sizing me up. Looking as though I've said something really quite offensive to his moral compunctions. "That was a threat," he begins, "But we'll come back to the threat in a bit. Firstly, though, why don't _you_ tell _me_ how you think I'm doing it? Because I'm always open to new ideas, y'know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, your version seems to have full conversations, two-way radio traffic in the vulgar vernacular. I'd _love_ to know how I'm managing _that_, Mr Holmes, any day of the week. No, my system is rudimentary. I can just about send out a red light or green. They can tell me nothing about Mr Mountjoy, oh, _please_!" Now he grins; "I'll be just _tortured_ if you don't tell me."

I could tell him he'll be tortured one way or another, but I bite my tongue. However, some version of the sentiment must have made it into my expression; he seems to almost pull away. I was staggered, at first, by the strength of his psychological defence in the face of physical violence. It went quite beyond anything I'd seen in any other subject. But perhaps now we are beginning to have some impact. Perhaps he's realized it simply is not going to stop.

"Tell me how you pass the messages, then."

He tosses his head, but it's all just show. There's not enough in the exchange. I know that, but his reactions might prove interesting. "Ah, never mind. It's fifty-fifty anyway."

I laugh, "And they gave you a masters…"

"A doctorate, actually, what's your point?"

"Your relatively small and currently leaderless organization against the joint constabularies and prison systems of four countries does not constitute a fifty-fifty chance."

"The result is they got him or not, that's fifty-fifty. And while we're on the subject, here's some maths for you, Mycroft, four of seven. Four, sir, of seven." Only when he sits back do I realize just how close he'd leaned in. Behind his chair, he cracks his knuckles. "Do you want me to tell you about the weekend's entertainment?"

"I want you to tell me how you pass the messages out."

"I know you do. But it's all a little bit over when I tell you that, don't you think? So, coldly, logically, _mathematically_, that's about the last thing I'm likely to tell you. Whereas this other thing's scheduled for tomorrow night, so… well, do the maths."

Something has buoyed his spirits. He speaks, now, as though on the very point of psychotic laughter. The attacks are coming closer together. That could be it. I knew it was too good to be true; he's not out of cards, not by a long chalk.

"Let's do it differently," I tell him. "Let's agree terms first. No back and forth, no teasing it out. One speaks and then the other."

If I'm not mistaken, he was not expecting this. And if I'm not mistaken he seems to see some sort of weakness, some victory in it for him. But I have assessed the angles since our last meeting and I am comfortable with the decision. I am, at least, until he smiles. He says, "Agreeable. Well, you know what I'm putting on the table. What will you offer in return? Just give me a rough idea. A theme or an age range or… As you would have it, Mr Holmes."

I feel ridiculous. I'm sure I sound ridiculous, "Twenty-six to twenty-eight." God, it's awful. A feeling like vomiting; the cold shaking afterward, the sour taste, the sensation of having turned, inside and out, to something gelatinous and suppurating. Before I can quite stop it, I have placed the back of my hand to my mouth. I tell myself that this is necessary and that a great deal of damage might be prevented, curbed at least, by this co-operation. I tell myself.

"Nah," he says, nose wrinkled. "The rehab years. Boring. Not worth my time. …If I say the word 'heroin' again, are you going to flounce out like you did before?" I believe my face must give my feelings away, because he relents, "Oh, alright, never mind." There's no sense in trying to hide the little tics from him, the emotion of the subject. He already knows all that's lying here, waiting for him to tap into it. That's the whole point of the exercise. There's no point in hiding it. "Alright, we're not ready for that most sensitive of subjects yet. We'll get there, Mycroft, don't worry about it. No, we just need to get stronger together before we go there. Deepen our relationship until we reach the level where you'll be comfortable enough… Or desperate… Oh, there's an idea, what about sex?"

"Not applicable."

"Liar."

"You said it yourself. Adler, I believe, brought up your little… _pet-name_, for Sherlock."

He mock-sighs, overdramatic. "Well, of _course_ I told Reenie he was a virgin… Fuck's sake, I was using her to _get_ to him. I told her what she needed to know, not the _truth_…" And he rolls his eyes as if I've been incredibly stupid. "So are we going with that, then? Firsts, notables, anything else you feel I need to know? That gets you tomorrow night, definitely. Called right off. Red lights all the way."

These are awful things, that may only come to pass between awful men in awful little rooms like this one.

I have nothing in me to speak. I nod.

Then, "Tell me about tomorrow night."

"I predict a riot. T In The Park. The music festival. It's all going to go absolutely mental. Thousands and thousands of people, barriers penning them in, lots of rage, lots of violence, lots of crushes and casualties and everybody from Sky News to BBC3 recording the whole thing. If the lights, that is, are green. Now, I'll just sit here and listen carefully, and you see how many lights you can change to red. Not a word from me. No guide. Floor's yours, sir, in your own time…"

He sits with his arms folded, with his eyes on me. There is just one quick flash of a smug smile, but that's all. After that his expression is blessedly blank. Watching, observing, but with objectivity. Without investment or antics. In moments, it's almost as though he's gone.

Somehow, it's no easier to talk to an empty room. I try to bear in mind why I agreed to this. The longer I sit silent, the harder that becomes too. And so I just start, in the hopes that it will be over all the sooner.

"It wasn't something we ever talked about. For starters, he never asked. We can only assume some textbook taught him everything he felt he needed to know. That was always my theory. His teenage years were… too quiet, really. Mother never worried. 'Come to girls in his own time', that was all she had to say. I worried. He talked himself into trouble once, a biology teacher found him talking a vegan boy into participating in a dissection and… Ultimately he was forced to help paint sets for the school play. Actresses and costumes were provided, of course, by a nearby girl's school. There was… a _dare_. One of them kissed him. So far as I know that was the first and the last for a long time after.

"He never seemed confused. When I think back on that part of my life all I really remember is the uncertainty, second guessing everything. But Sherlock has an uncanny ability to assess his own wants and needs. In his mind, he has never engaged in any single act to his own detriment. That's a terrible sort of a thing, but you could never explain that to him. Romantic feeling, _sexual_ feeling, that was something he could live without and which he suspected might only ever hurt him. And so he threw it away.

"Any later experiences were undoubtedly the result of… inebriation, of one sort or another. They were always one-offs and they were always followed by long spans of thoughtless celibacy. You want me to tell you if there was ever anyone special, the question's burning out of you, but there wasn't. There were names that repeated themselves, but they didn't seem to have any meaning. There was one occasional attachment. A few days a year, if that. It began right before his rehabilitation. I was kept very much away from it. She was a voice who once or twice answered his phone. She was breathing in another room while he kept me at the door. But like any other, she would appear to be gone now. Nothing, as I'm sure you know, happened with Adler, and therefore I can only assume that that nameless person was the last. You want me to tell you who she was. The fact is I don't know."

"Liar."

"I have nothing else to tell you."

"Oh, now that's a _whopper_ of a lie," he laughs. And then, with a strange sort of warmth, with something like kindness, "But the rest can wait for another time, I think."

I look up, and only when I do so do I realize how long I was looking away. That I had been staring at utterly nothing, and seeing even less than the air in middle distance. I can't help but wonder if it was that, rather than those few scraps I was able to offer, which has made him concede. "Red lights," he says, "here to Scotland. Go on. I'll see you next week."

There is a thank-you on my very lips before I bite it back.

Me. About to _thank_ him. As if I had been released from something, as if he were _allowing_ me to leave.

_Gratitude_. Real, wholehearted _gratitude_. And for less than nothing.

There are awful things that happen in awful little rooms like these, and between awful men.


	5. Brutes: Jim

Hand on my heart, scout's honour, upon my eyes, swear to God, hope to die, shame the devil, promise promise promise, I will never, _ever_ lay a hand on Mycroft Holmes.

It is only instinct that calls for blood, even just for the sickening connection of my fist in his smug fecking face. That's just instinct. And I'm not an animal, I'm above that. I don't need that. Want it, yes, _god_ yes, but need it no, not… I don't… Well, it depends how you define 'need' really, but my definition doesn't encompass all-consuming sensations of yearning. For me, a need is something you can't move on from, can't go any farther without. This isn't that. No. No, I won't hurt him, not even to kill him.

The reason human beings have thumbs is so we don't have to be dogs anymore. His continued, unbruised existence earns me my thumbs. And, and my cleverness, and all the smart things, and the ruthless things because only the best and most dangerous animals can lie and steal and eat their young. Sharks, for instance. Crocodiles. I like both of those animals. I like sharks best.

You know the story about how if a shark stops moving it dies? That's a myth. Sometimes I feel like it's not a myth at all. But it's a myth. Sharks can grow their teeth back. They don't really have to, the new teeth are already grown, they just wait there and then they can move them in. Sharks have three rows of teeth. Think about that. Seriously, just for a second. Think about that and nothing important for just a second. Definitely don't think of important things. Definitely don't think of the answers Holmes is coming for.

He's coming in the door. It's an interesting door, with that frosted reinforced glass in it and all sorts of other… interesting… th- Don't think of sodium thiopental.

Think of anything but sodium thiopental.

Think of anything except the jab every evening since I last saw my old mucker Mycroft, the man himself, old Legs Eleven, elegant fecking gent that he is, and how they asked me after the first one if I was a man or a woman, and rather than telling them to fuck off and ask their loving mothers same, I just said 'man', straight off, honest.

_Fuck's_ sake, I said _don't_ think of sodium thiopental, get away from that.

"This is cheating," I tell Holmes, as he sits himself down.

He smiles at me. Actually smiles. You know that think you hear people say about how it takes more muscles to frown than to smile? That's a myth too. It depends totally on your usual expression and the shape of your face. It was made up by some fucking Mary Poppins treating a smile as an isolated, mouth-only event and a frown as a full-face crisis so she could sound sweetness and light and sell a _billion_ saccharine, self-serving posters to teachers and cutesy middle-aged women-in-the-next-cubicle, _Christ's sake_, sodium thio… thiopen… he smiles at me, the bastard. Smiles and says, "Love and war."

Who's at war? Me and him? No, he's never seen war. I could show him war, if he really wanted to go there, but I don't think he does. I think he's being metaphorical. A metaphor is a simile that doesn't use 'like' or 'as'. He's thinking of me and him over this table being a microcosm of full-blown proper blow-shite-up war, being all highbrow about it, but this isn't war. No, I could bring him war, but I won't, it wouldn't serve me. It's tempting, because I could call down armies that would level the building in which we sit and take us with it but- _Shite_, no, don't think about the armies, don't think about the answers, don't think about anything important, no, don't, don't, don't think about sodium thiopental.

It's a barbiturate. It severely inhibits the abilities and actions of the upper brain for a relatively short period of time. It's your upper brain that lets you take the true things and put them away in a dark corner. It is the storytelling part of your brain. That's the part you need for lying and that's the part that's feeling a _little_ bit dodgy because of the sodium thiopental, and that's why I'm not thinking about _– shite!_

"How are you passing the messages out?"

"Smoke signals. Semaphor. Morse. Pigeon. Wire. Encoded on microchips embedded in the brains of morally ambiguous, stony-faced gentlemen, that's a good film, I remember that film, I liked that film, they hadn't killed yer man's girlfriend yet so he could still act, he really managed that big shouty bit under… like, a bridge, or something, I forget exactly, but it was really good, what the _fuck_ is his name, he did that film where they say all human beings are just batteries, I like that one too, enjoyed that-"

I _think_ I'm still talking.

Sodium thiopental makes you talk too much. Makes you look at that gent across the table and think, Ah, sure, that's Mycroft, that's the old gent, that's my buddy, my pal, my bestest best friend in all universe, oh, aye, sure I can talk to hi-_No, _no, I can't. Those are bad thoughts. You can't be sarcastic when you're full of thiopental. Your brain will start and take you seriously.

Here's a good thing, though; all this pointless talking, he starts to look awful displeased. Puts his fingers together like a proper villain, well, he's learning, he'll get there someday, leans in over them. _He_ tells _me_, "Disinformation. Very good, very interesting tactic."

"Thank you."

"I have no record of you ever being held by any other organization with our subtle capacities. Where did you learn to combat what is practically a truth serum?"

I've got better friends than him. I want to say that, but I don't, and when I get out of here I get a drink for that. I'm counting up drinks. Any time I do something that makes me particularly proud of myself, I add one to the night of truly epic , oblivion-pursuing drunkenness that is to follow this fecking harrowing time in my life. And I'm not quite at the point yet where I'm going to need medical attention, so I'm not trying hard enough, but that, that, holding my tongue when I wanted to talk just now even though I'm full of sodium _fucking_ thiopental, that makes me proud.

I may never have suffered these particular _subtle capacities_ myself, but some of my nearest associates have been right through it all. That was a weird night, y'know, calling round your closest mates and saying, "Well, so, you've been tortured by the Brits before, haven't you? Come round here and get me ready for it." Seb was alright, he was just reluctant enough for me not to get insulted but Dani, well, she had the phone down before I even finished. I'd hardly drew a second breath she was at the door with a car battery and a _brace_ of delightful bloody chemical aides, and she enjoyed it all too much, y'know, I was proper disgusted with her, but-

"What's that, Mycroft? Draw me into unrelated, unimportant topics, get me talking, jump in with something special right at the critical moment? That's very good, very interesting tactic."

"Back to the messages, then."

"You ordered this. I know you did. Because I kept saying the dreaded H word. Only some of them just call it H, don't they, does that mean I've just said it again, twice, is that it, aren't you going to get all hurt and offended and flounce out with your nose in the air and a poker up your arse again, I'm a simple soul, y'know, I like routine, you should stick with it, but you did this, didn't you, you wanted me drugged because I kept talking about your fucking junkie brother and his naughty little habit, isn't it – " Like to see _him_ full of sodium thiopental. Maybe I should just get out and we'll take him in somewhere and we'll torture him and see how _he_ likes it. We'll shoot him up against his will and _there_, that _there _is what I call an idea. "-What would you do if I pumped Sherlock full of-?"

"_Fine_," he spits.

More to make me stop talking than anything else. I can't really help it, but I sort of think, well, you asked for this, you arranged this when you think about it, that's the point I was making you wanted me to talk, so…

"Frankly," he continues, "when you are eloquent and operating at your usual level of brute cunning, you are just about bearable. This, however, I honestly can't stand. So why don't we just skip to the end?"

"What, all the quid pro quo stuff? We always skip to the end. Have you not noticed this yet? You never get the first thing you come in and ask for. Look at me. I'm full of play-nice drugs and you can't even get me to tell you what I'm doing to get a little yes or no out the door and into the-"

Street. All I was going to say was 'street', into the 'street', but that was too close, that was too much like what he wants me to talk about. And I can tell him about the job, I won't need to lie about that, but I might not play it right. He's only moving us onto this because he thinks I'll make a mistake. See, I was led to expect, I mean Sebastian told me, this would go on for hours and he'd just sit there and ask questions, over and over, let me talk myself into tangles and holes. I learned a hundred pointless facts about sharks and crocodiles so that I could stay suitably distracted for all those hours, so if he's letting me move on it's because he thinks he's going to get something good out of it that way.

Crocodiles are old as dinosaurs. God, they must be bored. Do you think maybe the dinosaurs got together and decided it just wasn't worth it? Fuck the meteor theory, maybe they drank the special lemonade. Once you're a T-Rex, what have you got to go on to?

"Alright," I tell him, "Okay then. Where were we, where had we gotten to, what brutal little point on Uncle Jim's list of terror and destruction and-"

"We had just averted doomsday at a music festival."

Sarky bastard… He has no idea what goes into organizing a real, proper spontaneous riot with guaranteed fatalities. Switching one _off_, yes, but not putting it together, and planting the pockets of contention, and ensuring that violence follows on and – this is too much like telling Bond the step-by-step of my evil plan, I'm going to stop now.

"Ah, yeah, so that… No, wait, where does that put us? It's…" Oh, this isn't funny. This isn't even me just keeping him going, this is me genuinely stuck. He watches me like he's trying to make up his mind whether I'm genuine or not, but this is no joke, I wouldn't joke when I'm drugged, I was told not to, told that was a bad idea, so I wouldn't joke and most certainly not about this. "_Shite_, where am I? What came after T?"

"U."

"Oh, you're very funny. Oh, it hurts to breath. Oh, you should be on stage, mate. There's one leaving town in the morning, ha! My da used to say that, but that's really going back a bit, _no_, hold on a second, I'll get this."

"How can I offer you anything in return if you can't be certain?"

"Why should _I _offer _you_ anything at all, Mr Mycroft, when you've already forfeited the round by cheating? Drugs are cheating, surely? Is that my lesson to learn? Is _talking_ about drugs cheating too? I keep coming back to this. That's my key theory as to why I am currently struggling against a seriously shut-down brain _and_ the knowledge of god knows how many generations of ancestor shaking their heads at me for letting anything but alcohol get me into this state, and they don't understand it's not my fault, y'know, they just keep glaring and shaking their heads. It was either the hospital job or the one at the village council meeting. One of them burns, one of them gets blown up. They're big sledgehammer ones, but I knew if I was still here at this stage I'd want to really give you something to think about. I've planned, y'see. Not just the work itself, but the order and the psychology of it, see? Have you all figured out and I must say, so far, you're just about playing to it but-"

He's sinking. This is all turning out to be a bit much for him. Apparently nobody told Mycroft you're just supposed to sit there and keep asking the questions.

Or maybe it's that I get to him. Maybe it's because it's me he can't just put up with it. I think I like that version of events.

I can tell he's sinking because I can see it in his face. He starts to look exhausted and grey, oh so very quickly. I say, "This isn't working out like you hoped, is it?"

"No."

"No, I didn't think so. Do you want to give me a second to think about hospitals and village council meetings? No! Wait! Don't need a second, I know – it's the hospital. D-… Friend of mine made up this story about some mental case weekend warrior nurse just about surviving the riot in Scotland, going back to work and going up in flames, that's right, it's the hospital."

"Which?"

"Holby General."

I actually just said that, didn't I?

I had a whole bit ready about my crocodile wallet and how much those can cost and I just went on ahead and said that.

"Thank you," he says, and stands up to leave.

He's got this little smile on his face, like when you know the cat's laughing at you because it's the only one that saw you fall getting out of the shower, and you'd think you're safe with the cat, but cats have this way of looking at you that's just like, '…You fucking waster, if I could use a can opener I wouldn't even _need_ you' and-

What I mean is, he's all covered in victory like he's won or something, and I just find it so funny I _actually_ go to pieces laughing at him, until it doubles me up, until this time it actually _does_ hurt to breathe, until my eyes sting with the tears and the handcuffs keep me from wiping them away but it doesn't matter and I can't open my eyes anyway. I'm just _gone_. They call it hysteria, some people, some kinds of this, but it's so hard to care, I'm just _gone_ and…

And finally, from the doorway, he turns round and looks for a moment uncertain, and if I might be about to take his petty little one-off away from him.

For a long minute I can't speak to tell him anymore, btu I fight for it, compose myself, get a deep breath.

"You think you've won because you got that one," I explain. It sends me into another ruction, but he still doesn't get it. Struggling up out of it is easier second time round. "What I mean is, what I'm saying, I won't need you drugged to make you tell me the truth."

That disgusts him. He tries to leave again.

That's crap. He can't leave until I say so.

"Oi, Mycroft!" I love that he has to listen to me. He's so obsessed with the idea that I must know something big and gorgeous he can't miss a word. I tell him, because it's something he needs to know, and to remember, "Sharks have teeth."


	6. Necessary Evil: Mycroft

I had them stop the drugs, after that. Given the relative success of the venture it was not a popular decision amongst those officials who are aware of the project. But they exist only in an advisory capacity and it was not their decision to make. I had them stop the drugs.

They asked me, of course, why. I told them nothing. How could I stand there, in front of those who must by necessity trust and respect me, and tell them that I simply could not bear it? However, it is my opinion now that silence was unwise, and gave entirely the wrong impression, in that they somehow managed to infer the truth.

At the club this morning, before coming here, there was a visitor. A dark, nervy little man. We are not unacquainted, but I find him altogether disagreeable. They keep _sending_ him to me. He knows he's unwelcome and, all the more unforgivable, he lets it show. This time he claimed to have been called upon by 'worried colleagues'. This in itself is ridiculous. I have no colleagues. Others are aware but, as I said, they have no vote to cast. He then proceeded to proposition me with state-sanctioned tranquilizers. "You may find," he said, "that they help you bear up under the pressure of confrontation."

After the events at Aintree University Hospital, there is surely no shame in admitting that I was tempted by the offer.

I am, however, entirely sober as the door is opened for me. That vile little man was packed off with his pills all still firmly in his pocket.

As ever, Moriarty leans out of his chair to watch me from his very earliest opportunity. Grinning, he begins, "They tried to make me go to rehab, but-"

"Please. Don't finish that."

As I take my now-accustomed seat he straightens, seems almost to mimic my posture. There's a turn of his head, as though stretching a tension from his neck. It's dreadfully familiar until I realize that I am making the same motion. In a caricature of my voice, he begins for me, "How are you passing the messages out?" His mouth is set, eyes dead. A parody of boredom and remove.

I sigh, "No, let's start with Aintree."

He tries for just a moment to keep up his pretence, before he begins to laugh. I let him. Let him go on until he stops to draw breath and manages, "Ah, I'm sorry about that. But I told you drugs were cheating. And, really, it's your own fault. You walked out before I had time to realize Holby General is a fake hospital off the TV. BBC, mate, Tuesday nights. Bloody awful program, but you know how it is. You go in, you work all day, you sing the _fucking_ Bedtime Song for the hundredth time if it's once-"

"Excuse me."

"-fantasize about crushing a record of the bedtime song under your shoe until it's dust, come home, sling something in the microwave, and the sex lives and political machinations of a load of big-lipped nurses starts to look like good telly, do you know what I'm saying?" I know he's said too much. I know he's told me something. I don't know what exactly it _means_ yet, but I intend to find out. Right now, though, it would appear his question was rhetorical. "I take it that's why I'm clean again."

"Yes," I lie. "I've found I trust you rather less when you're not in control of yourself."

There is something terrible and very, very earnest in his expression. "Wise man."

Oh, he doesn't know the half. Not yet, anyway. I have new gambits for him and all that's left is to wonder how much of it he could have seen coming. "I was going to suggest that we write-off our last interview."

Moriarty considers. "Since I got nothing out of it and you let a hospital burn to the ground, I don't see why not."

Most amenable. Most agreeable. If one were very stupid, and perhaps had never met him before, one might mistake him for a co-operative subject. There is a considerable burn, hard and red, on the side of his neck which attests otherwise.

I settle back in my chair. I don't need tranquilizers. I am perfectly calm without them. "You were going to tell me something about a village council meeting, I believe."

"Hm? Oh, no, no, that's not for ages yet. It's because it's a bomb and the hospital was a fire, I just got them mixed up. In my drug-addled mind. But then we were drawing a line under that, no more of that. Really? Are we moving on to this already?"

"You said it yourself; I never get anything else that I ask for, do I?"

He turns quite suddenly cagey, off-balance; "You're _taking_ that awfully well…" Which means he suspects some ploy on my part, but has neither anticipated it nor can tell what it is. It really is the very best I could have hoped for. I do nothing to keep this from surfacing in my expression. He grins again, tries to cover up, but that's all it is. This, for the first time, is some small scrap of the power balance. I've _thought_ before that I had it but this is it. Now that I've felt it in all honesty I know what it feels like. "Right, then, fine!"

He stops. Says nothing more. He's not quite lost for words, I don't know that any will ever claim _that_ victory, but he's unsure of quite how to continue. And I am not inclined to help. "Ready to get started?"

He declines to answer immediately. It's not a hesitation; he has decided where he wants to go with this. Rather, it is his only attempt to unnerve me. I don't allow it. Eventually, that smile returns, slow and glowing. Childish, almost. "Here's a riddle for you, Mycroft. I went to the city, and I stopped there, I never went there and I came back again."

Deny him or humour him. I know which will shake him more.

"That's an old one. It's a watch."

"Isn't it just? Your little brother, he can be a right _vengeful_ bastard when he wants to be, can't he?"

"Quite the unholy terror."

"Tell me one from childhood and I'll tell you what a watch has got to do with anything."

It's not exactly a fair exchange. But whatever the watch means, whatever the watch has to do with anything, I need him to call it off. "The day Mother told him that piracy was no longer a viable career choice in this day and age."

"Piracy? I would have said cowboys-and-Indians."

"Never. The unambiguous morality of black-and-white Stetsons held no appeal for him. He was seven, at the time. He replaced no more nor less than one third of the loose powder in her make-up bag with talc, before ensuring she was in a painful rush getting ready. Nine people asked her if she was feeling alright before she noticed the considerably paler shade. Trying to wash it off, it turned to paste and she was forced to make a most ungracious exit from that particular party. Will that do?"

"Indeed. Very thorough. And true as well and… are _you_ feeling alright?"

"I would have thought you would be pleased."

"No, sorry," he says, "You're absolutely right. Gift horses and all that. My turn. My story, as we already established, is about a watch. The watch was very recently left in for expert repairs. Little pawnbrokers, down Soho way, woman's a _genius_. She can make a watch do about anything. For those that are so inclined, actually, she can even fit a little device that'll respond to radio signals and reset your watch for you, once a day, to GMT. Or any other stated time zone, in fact. Of course, she's completely straight, so she definitely wouldn't fit one to a watch that was an exact replica of one worn by a very famous public figure."

"Unless she was unaware."

He gives a large mock gasp. "But Mister Holmes, surely there's no cad so unscrupulous, no blackguard so vile, no fucker so morally bereft, upon this green earth as to do such a thing?"

"I know it's difficult to believe."

He shifts. He would be moving his chair back if it were not bolted to the floor. One who is calm, rational and emotionally uninvested would take no pleasure whatever from this. "Alright, now, that was a joke, so tell me who you are, and what you've done with my source."

"Whose watch, Moriarty?"

He settles again. But he glares at me as though I might bite if he were to take his eyes off me for a moment. "Teen years. How much more vicious did dear Sherlock get when the hormones hit him?"

"He didn't. In fact, it all rather ground to halt just then. I've mentioned before, he was a withdrawn teenager. To all intents and purposes he avoided social interaction of any sort, positive or negative. And whatever was in his head remained there and only there. He kept no records, no notes. And yes, before you start, I looked. Of course I did. I was worried about him."

Slowly, he turns his head on one side. "You're sort of _built_ for what you do, aren't you?"

"I've given you what you asked for. Your _turn_." The term is fetid, disgusting. There is no game here. There is no pleasure to be gained from it. I do not play, but judge and interrogate. I do not play. I do not enjoy. I do not play.

"Well, surely you can guess. Somebody where being just a little bit late can make all the difference. And where missing your chance can have ramifications big enough to annoy you. And let's face it, all your talk about 'minor positions', you're quite an important gent. And important gents, they live in the rarefied atmosphere, up above all us plebs, and I'd have to go _really_ high to hit you. Like, highest in the land sort of high. Higher than me the other day, but then we were wiping the slate clean on that one, weren't we?"

"A _name_."

"That's the other thing about the rarefied atmosphere. They all live in their own little bubbles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he wouldn't know what time it is, any given time. He's got his watch, for instance. And even if something were to go wrong with that, you'd have to seriously incapacitate his PA and somehow distract all the aides that keep him on track. And you'd really have to pick your moments. And I'm sure Number Ten is just full of clocks. Dignitaries give each other clocks, don't they? I saw a Nixon clock once on Antiques Roadshow. You should have took the diazepam."

I look up. He's staring into space, looking quite as though he might just have mentioned The Antiques Roadshow. Giving no indication whatever of having mentioned anything else, not an eye-blink. He feels my eyes on him and looks round. His confusion appears to be genuine. "What?" he chips in, "What did I say?" And I watch as his eyes travel down and we see in the same moment and with the same newness that my forefinger is tapping, quite quickly and with no discernible rhythm, on the back of the opposite hand.

I fold my hands away. "Say I believe that ridiculous story even for an instant. I might infer that you used a pickpocket to swap the watches?"

"My people are better than that. I used a fecking _magician_ to swap the watches. All that hand-shaking along the cordon lines… Dangerous business…"

"…Say I believe you."

He grins. "Just for the sake of argument, eh? What caused the post-adolescent bloom of sullen, wordless Sherlock into a great elegant butterfly of barely concealed hatred?"

I knew it would come to this. He's obsessed. And so I am ready and prepared. I don't so much as have to pause for breath. I ensure that I do no miss a beat and tell him coolly, "Addiction. Call it off."

"Certainly. Once I get more than a one word answer. That's really rude, y'know."

"Drug addiction."

"Hilarious. Give it up."

I don't want to. But I _need_ him to call it off. It falls apart if I don't. All of this, all this odd pandering, this co-operation between us, this has all been for nothing if I can't get him to call this one off.

"A dealer. I… I never heard the details. The word 'humiliation', that's all I know for sure. It was, ironically enough, the talc again. I was unaware of the fact, but Sherlock would appear to have known… Apparently if one injects from a source cut with too much talc, it moves from the bloodstream into the lungs, and can cause the symptoms of infection with no infection to fight, and a large amount of hardening and scarification, leaving the sufferer with lifelong problems and a much greater risk of further damage and viral contraction."

Somewhere very far from me, as though on the other side of water, he actually tells me in so many words that his very favourite part is when I look away. Makes some joke about how interesting the skirting tiles on his left must be. Very, very far away, though; it's alright. It's all quite alright. Because while I may have had to humour him, and while he may have just had from me something I would rather not have given, I can still feel it. That sensation of strength, and of being centred. It is as though I have been grasping all this time and here, today, I have found something to hold onto. That little edge of the power that comes and goes in this room. It has come to me and shall remain with me.

"Call it off," I say, for confirmation.

He nods, almost sincerely. "What is it you can keep after you've given it to somebody else?"

Another riddle. I get up and start to leave him there. Another old and well-known riddle. What can you keep after you've given it?

Only your word.

* * *

[A/N - I Promise (capital-P) to end this before I get too boring. It's two men either side of a table; I'm not sure how far I can push that. But I think I can continue for a while yet before I have to. I usually wouldn't work on a story like this without a definite time frame and structure, but I think I can do it with this one. Is there anybody out there who would stick with me if i tried?

Please don't take this for one of those irritating 'I won't go on until i get loads of review'-type notes. I'll continue, but I'll just start wrapping things up.

Hearts, sincerely, and thanks for all your support to date - Sal.


	7. Manipulation: Jim

You know, I'm quite looking forward to our little session today. It's all planned out, exactly where we stand, where I need to make him go next, the best way to get him there. This one's going to go alright for me, I can feel it. Something's smiling down on me. Out in the world, somewhere, there is chaos because of me, I can feel that too, and the balancing calm and goodness comes down over me.

I promise, I'm not on the drugs again, this is honestly how I feel.

Actually, there's been no more of that at all. And thank God because... look, I know there's different kinds of shite do different kinds of things, but how anybody could ever crave that sensation of being away from yourself, of not being in control of what you're doing, how anybody could ever want that is just beyond me... Well, no, not beyond me. Removal of responsibility, disavowal of social constriction, just fecking forgetting for an hour at the time, yes, fine, all of that. But not knowing what you're _saying_; that's hell. Thankfully, hell is somewhere I've been getting farther from, this week. Even the hefty gents have only been in the once. Now please, don't think I'm stupid enough to believe that's it over and everything's going to be civil from here on out. I think they're just letting some of the damage heal up before they pile more on top of it. But everybody likes a little holiday now and then.

So aye, yeah... All in all, good day.

Getting better and better the closer the footsteps in the hallway get. Here he comes, perfect timing, you could hum the Imperial March along with him and never miss a beat nor fail to match the mood. Him and me have a few things to teach each other about proper villainy. That umbrella of his, for instance. I've got to get a gimmick like that.

But he really should, by this stage in his life, have stumbled upon the wonder of casual cruelty that is placing a hand in one's trouser pocket while one's jacket is still partially buttoned. It sounds like nothing, but Christ Jesus and his holy mother, it is effective. I think because the other person has to wonder then what you've got in that pocket they couldn't see before...

I digress. You'll be familiar with the mechanics of this by now. Two chairs, one of which is bolted to the floor, pointless table, all the usual.

And yet my partner in this duologue is oddly silent. And he's _glaring_.

I can't help myself. "This is going to be good news, I can tell." And when he still doesn't answer, "You look tired, Mycroft. What's the matter? Secretary decide she likes 'em dark and Irish now? Send her in, I'll talk to her."

"It was _supposed_ to be called off."

"What, the two of you?"

And he _slams_ his hand down hard on the table like he wishes it was me. I hold my breath for just a second; he's going to hit me at _some _stage. I know that much. But apparently it's not today. I thought it was a bit early... "I've spent the last two days preventing war with a minor African state."

"Nah. I called it off. You left here with my blessing and a perfect red light."

"I left here and didn't once open my mouth to speak."

Ah. Clever boy. I knew he had something up his sleeve last time he was here. Ah, maybe there's something in a genetic theory of IQ after all. Nurture, darling, take yourself off, Nature's just proved herself.

I shake my head at him. "That was deeply unwise. You should have discussed with me before you decided to try something new. I would have told you. Spared you the sleepless nights. We're not at war, are we? What if you get bombed and everybody forgets me and I'm just in this bunker forever?" He casts me an arch, nigh-camp little roll of the eyes; _Don't tempt me_. Ah, he's learning. Bless his heart, he really is learning from me. That's fine. I'm all for that. Then I don't have to feel so bad about taking everything I need from him and then just pissing off in the end. "Good, we're not at war. But really, Mycroft, you can't hold this one against me. You were the one who deviated."

"Me. I'm how you get the messages out of this room."

"You are the only thing that leaves this room that you don't feel like you have to vet and censor. What else would it be? You should have asked your brother. He would have had it like _that_." I snap my fingers. Just to demonstrate how quickly and effectively Sherlock could have solved my little Chesterton.

Mycroft is suffering four distinct sorts of rage, all at once. There is, as a background colour, the original rage he feels every time he sees me. I like that one, but in the way I like my stripy dressing gown. Warm and familiar. There's the next most frequent sort, like an occasional steak dinner, that comes up whenever he feels I don't deserve to so much as mention Sherlock. Then there are new rages. I have used him, and this has the rare and rewarding connotations of a fine whiskey. But then there's the best of all, and I won't tell you what that reminds me of, because I am a gentleman.

There is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

I say it for him. Making him articulate his own quandary would be too much of a cruelty even for me. "You have no choice but to go on exactly as before, otherwise none of it will be called off ever again."

"All of it will be called off, now that I know what to say."

"You think it's as simple as you telling somebody whether you won or not? Please don't take me for a fool, and don't think I underestimate you either. I knew you'd get _this_ far. I wasn't going to give you an off-switch now, was I? That would be something of a one-way ticket to Egypt. It's still Egypt, isn't it? When you get renditioned? Rendered? Ren... What do you get when you get fucked off out of the country so they can shoot you in the head and be done with it?"

"Disappeared."

Ah, feeling feisty, are we? Ready to give backchat, are we? God, I love the first time you back somebody into the corner. I never get any better at predicting how they're going to go.

I tell him, "Just for your information, every time you leave here and say the red-light or green-light codeword, a friend of mine has a busker with an accordion walk round Vauxhall Cross playing 'Like A Puppet On A String'." I had to tell somebody that. I've been dying to tell somebody that. I just don't have an awful lot of company here, or in the cell. The hefty gents weren't interested. "You could listen out for him. That might help, somehow. I don't know, it feels like a red herring but it sounds like it would work..."

I'm mulling that particular paradox over while he considers his options. He doesn't have any, but he needs to come to that conclusion himself. He wouldn't believe me if I said it. And I've got that _fecking_ song in my head now, so he can take his time while I hunt up something less irritating.

I've started forgetting the words of songs, though. Or the names, artists. Always some little thing. I'll know it in my head but I won't be able to get at it. Been on my own too long, that's all it is. I'll be fine when I get out.

Him and me, we've talked about getting me rendered before. He still seems dead certain it's in the post, y'know. And while I know it won't happen, while I know there are people belonging to me who will crash that plane and me with it if they have to, just to deny him, I didn't like talking about it again just now. I don't generally think about it. So the next time he sighs over the vice-like grip I have on his very existence just now, I decide he's probably had enough time to come to terms. I say, "So do you want to talk about something actually _useful_ now?"

All the rage and glaring simmers down into one mean, awful grimace. He looks me right in the eye and says, "Isn't there some quicker way to do this?"

"You tell me everything there is to know, I walk away alive and kicking, neither ever darkens the other's door again."

"...Then I suppose we'll have to go ahead, won't we?"

"Well, quite." I don't mean to mimic him, but there's really no need for these heavy-hearted theatrics. No reason we couldn't have been friendly about this. Me, I'll take the hit on the torture, no pun intended, just provided we could do this over a cup of tea. They could uncuff me, y'know. I meant _some_ of what I said when I was high; I won't lay a hand on him.

Why would I? Sure, look at me and my little holiday of late; you _recover_ from that sort of pain.

"Okay," I tell him, "I won't draw you out or anything. Straight up, here and now, London double-decker, no survivors, massive collateral damage, one of the dead will be one of your SIS mates with a briefcase. The briefcase will have nothing it, but if you think the tabloids are going to give a shit, you're greatly mistaken. Alright? That's the gambit. Now impress me, Mycroft."

I think that must have caught him off guard. The open, candid offer, I mean. He must think elegant, genteel exchange is beneath me, somehow. Or worse, above me. He'll suffer for that, my God. I'll talk in such riddles he'll need an interpreter. I'll do the whole thing in Russian, see how _that_ suits him.

He rolls his eyes again. No joke in it this time. Gloomy bastard's bringing me down, Christ's sake.

"What do you want to hear?"

"You know what I want to hear."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, _why_?!" he bursts, and again, I _almost_ hold my breath. This isn't the time either, though. No, there's something different about this; it's not me he hates this time. "Why this _fixation_ with _that_ in particular?!"

"...Are you _serious_?"

"There are other things you could use. More dangerous things, _current_ things." Is he offering? It sounds like he's offering. I can have worse, but I can't have heroin? He's... I'm sorry, isn't he supposed to be the cold, logical one and I'm the raging psychopath that keeps hopping about all over the place? Because I have to _seriously_ recalibrate the plan if I've gotten him _that_ wrong... "What sort of blackmail can you build on ancient history at any rate?"

"Blackmail?" He's not serious. No. No way. He can't _possibly_ be serious. It's alright to laugh because that can't be _anything_ except a joke. "Is that... _blackm-..._" I can't even get the words out I've gone to pieces so... "Ah, Jesus, you're a riot, Mycroft, you're honest-to-God an absolute gas. Right now, come on, give me something to work with here."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"You still haven't answered me. Why that?"

Fuck's sake, he's just _determined_ to be serious today, isn't he? Suppose I'd better tell him _something_, shut him up... "Because the rest? The arrests, the three different schools, Cambridge, rehabilitation units, hospitalizations, near-death experiences, close calls with genuine criminality, I can _get_ all that. There's _records_. People were about for that and they took notes and they put them away in little manila folders and on computers and in their hearts forever locked where even you can't get at it. I don't need that crap. I've _got_ that. No, what I need is the _experience_ of it. The personal. The times in between. All the shite and the hopelessness and the – the fecking _heartbreak_ of it. Mycroft, darling, baby, sweetheart, oh my dear, I need _you_."

He thinks about walking out.

Then he thinks how he's narrowly averted doomsday since the last time he refused to play along.

Then he thinks about the tabloids, and how they don't care what's in the briefcase as long as that fella's carrying it when he dies, and all the talk, and the months and months of speculation, and how impossible it all becomes for him. Oh, and the countless dead and injured, too, of course.

He says, "The first was an experiment. Though, not in the classic sense. The university wouldn't allow him to study the brain chemistry of existing addicts. Not, at any rate, in a campus lab. Something to do with the morality of paying the subjects. And so he... He didn't bargain on finding a solution to certain of his own... problems."

Go on, my son, tell Old Jim, sure what harm could he ever do? I can't describe it to you; he gets all... I'm sorry, I don't have the words for it. He _looks_ like a confessional. I know that makes no sense on paper. Maybe you had to be there.

Because it's been a good day, all told. Because I'm feeling benevolent. Because it's all just karma, in the end, and it'll come back to me someday, if you believe in that shite, and it'll come back to me if you do or not because I'll make him grateful. So help me I'll make him grateful to me, because that'll hurt him more than I ever could uncuffed. Because of all of it. "That's enough. Go. We'll pick up next time."

I wish I could watch him. Just follow him, just for the next couple of hours. Quite apart from watching him deal with things he's never before said out loud, I want to see him listening for the codeword in his own sentences, and for the ragged busker coming over the bridge with his accordion.

Hurt him? Yes and no. I'm a patient man and I like to do things right. I want his every waking moment or nothing at all.

* * *

[A/N - Thanks so much for all your unbelievable support. To those of you who were so thoughtful and encouraging (including though by no means limited to the ever-wise and elegant sevenpercent), and to those of you who did not mean to be inspiring (you know who are), my most sincere gratitude.

Big shout too to Existant, who is currently translating this into Russian. I've never been Russianized, or anything-ized, to my knowledge. I am flattered and excited and proud as hell. Massive thanks there to boot. (I hope I don't make things *too* difficult for you :/ )


	8. Strength: Mycroft

Every word is a curse, another moment of potential betrayal, of _treason_. But then, I suppose, the time for treason must have come and gone. The buses are still running late. Three still come along at once. Those who use them still complain about them, those who do not still loudly declaim their virtues. Nothing has changed.

At some point, I have played along, been complicit, and never even known it.

But the door opens and some of the concurrent feeling goes away. Today, for the first since we started, he can't quite sit straight in his chair. Nor can he lean all the way forward either. His arms , it seems, will not quite support his weight. He lingers somewhere between, shifting some of the pain to his ribs by leaning against the table, and in this way he keeps from slumping altogether.

This isn't sadism. It's not cruelty or vengeance or any other problematically personal sort of concept. This is perfectly justified. When one is in possession of an enemy of the state, one does not submit to manipulation by the same. And one must demonstrate this determination in the most unequivocal manner possible.

He looks up and grins at me through a broken tooth. He says to me, "You're looking a bit rough, Mycroft. How're you feeling? Sit yourself down, take the weight off. You look stressed."

"Thus spake the oil painting."

"Ah, but I'll _live_," he says, "Or so they tell me. What'll you do, though?"

"A little more than live, I should think."

"You _shouldn't_ think. You shouldn't _deceive_ yourself. You'll do so much less than live. I'll hollow you out for a lamp to burn your brother in."

Even now, weeks and weeks of this, and his defiance leaves me stunned. He has undertaken pain with the zeal of the early martyrs. If only we could define just what it is that he believes in, what he draws so much strength from, we might be some step closer to taking it away from him. Right now, he sits cursing my name in three different languages, and there is some hint in this of the state we might bring him to, in a kind future. There is some hint, and it is quite enough to make all the work it will take just a little easier.

"This isn't fair game," he says. "Not that I expected fair game of the British Government, not in a year of Easter Sundays, but I just thought I'd let you know. When I keep calling them off? When I keep making your life easy and giving you little trinkets like the names and addresses of bomb makers and poison chemists? That's when you should be playing nice. Not when I'm messing you about and nearly causing wars and all that, that's… It's just not logical."

I tell him, "You never gave me the name and address of any poison chemist."

"Would you like one? She's got two major political assassinations coming up in the next quarter and only one of them is for me. I can live without her. You'd do better with her." There is just the hint of a threat. He knows better than to aggravate me today. But the argument is solid, and the hint is just enough. I shrug to show I'm open to the possibility. "Then get them to take the cuffs off. I've been strung up by the fingers for a day and a half, so trust me, you're in no danger."

This last is true, as far as it goes. There's no physical danger. There never has been.

I only have to turn my head towards the door and the guards come to do it. They don't question me. They give enough strange, sideways glances to show that they would like to, but it is not their place. To them, this seems like a big decision made quickly. Really it's nothing of the sort. It's a trifle. The handcuffs, honestly, were only ever a demonstration of power. The physical restraint was to be a concrete reminder of the metaphorical tying of his hands. But we've gone beyond that, now, I should say.

Nothing about what happens here takes places in the physical world anyway. That's out there. That gets blown up or burned down or shot or poisoned, or not. But it never comes in here.

Besides, the decision serves me. For once, I can be the one to make him wary of eye contact, acutely alert to his own vulnerability as he sits back, bringing each heavy limb around in turn to rest low in his lap.

He says, "Penny Corcoran. It's an address in Bristol. I'll write it down for you." It's better than a thank you. It's buying me, and before I've even had time to warm up from outside. "But she's got a decent network, so you'll have to proper raid her. Hold her up on the little pink suicide pills; she designed those."

"You're a regular matchmaker, putting those two in touch."

"What can I say? I bring people together." He's rubbing at scraped and bruised knuckles. In the little finger of his right hand there is the tell-tale swelling and limpness of a nasty fracture.

I ask, "Shall we get started? You don't seem much in the mood for the usual _banter_. Perhaps you should just tell me what's coming. I can leave. I could, if you wanted, see to it that you were left alone too."

But Moriarty laughs. Where he sources laughter, I don't know. I'm not entirely sure I want to either. "No," he says. "No, I've played as nice as I'm going to today. Besides; you and I were making progress last time."

Progress. Well, if that's what he wants to call it…

"Fine. Tell me what sword you've got hanging over my head this time, then."

"Hm…" He tips back his head, mock thinking. But the motion traps a bruise and he swings back wincing, "…Why should I?" Because he has to. Because it's not fair, not giving me the opportunity to stop him. It's not fair game. Of course, he sees this process cross my mind. Smiles gently, "Give me a reason to be good to you, Mycroft. Something easy. Something that doesn't mean a thing, except between us. Any little thing."

What use is this? What trap can he lay with the inconsequential? And if not blackmail then what's it all for, and why is it that he makes him smile? When I think about it, all of these questions are the same question, and all of them are the question I have been so totally unable to answer. What is it James Moriarty places his faith in? They're all the same question.

It's the first thing that comes into my mind. It's the wrong thing to tell him, but once I've thought it I can't make it go away again. I can do nothing but speak. "The first time he was arrested for possession I left him that first night in the cell. Thought somehow it might… _scare him out of it_. Something like that. He took his survival that first time as evidence towards a conclusion that hew ould survive another. If anything all it did was make him more reckless."

"We really have made progress. You went there all by yourself this time."

I couldn't think of anything else.

And somewhere in the interim I've committed unwitting treason because of something I thought, something I said aloud, that meant something more than I knew.

I can't think of anything else.

It occurs to me that there really is no way to make him suffer enough for this slight. Of course, we'll give it our very best. If nothing can ever be enough we'll have to at least throw everything at it.

He tells me now, "Well, it's not Penny Corcoran anyway, thank God. It's another woman, though. Right little madam… And you wouldn't believe the names she's got on her books. It could keep Whitehall in red tape and red-top papers for decades."

"Ah. The old Miss Whiplash gambit."

"Before you start, it's not Adler."

"Well, of course not. Adler's dead."

"Hm? Oh. Oh yeah. Forgot about that. 'Course she is."

"What are you getting at?"

"Another time when I'm more inclined to be kind to you, remind me to tell you about that opera house in that country with that tutor who has that student. But yeah, anyway. Hooker, important names, all that jazz. It's an old game, certainly, but a bloody effective one when you bring it off. Pun intended. Very much intended. You won't deny me one awful little pun, the state I'm in. You're not a sadist."

No, but I never said as much to him.

He grins.

"No," he says, "I'm not psychic. I'm just really, really good. Now talk for it, Mycroft. Something true."

"What's the use? Didn't you tell me before you knew all the useful things already?"

"But the useful things are all so ugly. I need human interest. Fill out a four page spread, sort of a thing… The ugly stuff I have, the lies I'll make up anyway. You're going to make it pretty for me. Wrapping paper, Mycroft. I need bright, shiny wrapping paper, and bows, and little puffy stickers with teddy bears on them."

"You said this wasn't about blackmail."

"It's not either. Now are you going to give me an answer or not? Tell me about you this time. Tell me when you first knew he had a _problem_." He tastes that final word. He rolls it round his mouth like he wants to remember every last dimension of it.

It is around about this point that I notice I can't stop staring at his hands. His arms have regained enough strength that he can lift them. One massages the thick flesh of the other between thumb and forefinger. There are three nail beds exposed, pink and glistening. Weak. He is weak, they are weak, weak, it is all vulnerability and weakness. And still something about them, just the fact of seeing them, fixates me. I am watching them when it begins.

"I already told you."

"Mycroft, don't start when I'm already pissed off with you, Christ's sake…"

"Honestly. I already told you. That first arrest. That was the first I knew of any of it. The first anybody knew, I think."

"He hid it well, then?"

"That's an understatement. So far as I was able to gather afterward, his dosages and the times between were very much regulated in those days. It was only later, the deeper he went, that science lost out to addiction. I'm told that's really quite normal. All his intelligence did for him was better allow him to rationalize what he was doing; a second hit, balancing an adrenaline jolt, alcohol and nicotine to ease the comedown. His intelligence allowed him to conclude that he could only escape it by switching himself off entirely. It was… a great detriment, in the long run."

"Was there shame in it, do you think? It sounds that way."

"No… No, I don't think. Rather it was all very private. Like one who hides a medical condition from their work colleagues. He never believed it did him any harm. He just didn't want anyone thinking less of him for his reliance. You of all people should understand that."

"I beg your pardon?"

I might as well. If he would torment me, if he would be so wilfully resilient to torture himself, I might as well. Do something. Take some scrap for myself. "Well, the impression you've always given is very much that of the lone operator. King of the castle, faceless centre of the network. But that's not quite the case, is it?"

"I don't follow."

He does. He just doesn't know why I would push it. I've unnerved him. Done _something_, taken _something_, some scrap of ownership.

"Your relationships mean a lot more to you than you would have me believe. You've told me often enough how your closest compatriots are keeping watch over all of this, how they'll come for you. When we caught up with _your_ thief, as you referred to her, it was patently clear that you'd previously prepared her for our coming-"

He laughs, "She always dresses like that."

"That isn't quite what I meant. Now, if there's such strength to be found amongst your core personnel, then why would have hidden that from us for so long? Why wouldn't you use it?"

"I don't know, Mycroft. You tell me. You're on a _roll_," he says, with a bored, disbelieving flare of his eyes. All forced. All fake. I'm far too close to something he never expected to hear. I'm beginning to believe these are the only real victories I'll ever have from him.

"Because you don't want anyone to think you _need_ them."

"What're you on about? Of course I need them. I'm not off out with the rifle and the lockpicks myself of a night. Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft. Shut your mouth before you put the other foot in it. I need you to hop on out of here with just that one between your teeth."

"And Miss Whiplash?" I ask, with assurance more than hope for once.

"Consider her gagged." As I stand to leave, he feels the need to get some last desperate speech in. I do not merely stop to listen as I normally would. I turn, and give him my full attention. Today, I am perfectly content to do so. I become just a little less content as he goes on. "Of course I need my people. I never could have gotten here without them. Take 'Reenie, for instance. Sorry, _Miss Adler_. Without her and her cryptographer client, I never could have pissed you off enough to actually bring me in. Oh, yeah, I know, of course, the bulk of it was me going for the Littlest Holmes like I did, I know that stung you. But me getting that flight full of corpses, without that you never could have got me quite so deep underground, am I right? And somebody else could have come to talk to me, and it wouldn't have had to be you. Of course I need them, Mycroft. They're a bloody useful bunch. Remind me sometime I should tell you about the Greenwich job. Sometime I'm more in the mood to laugh in your smug fecking face. Deal?"

"Next time," I promise him.

Because his hands are not cuffed behind him, he brings one up, tipping me a half-hearted salute. This time I leave, and to the guard in the hallway I leave a message to be relayed. "See that the program for him is kept up again. Same as before. Just keep it constant."

He knows better than to question me.

* * *

[Continuing a recent theme of dedications across my stories (and why the hell not, because you people are fantastic), this one's for the wonderfully encouraging girl who likes 'em dark and Irish. And I'm not talking about Anthea.]


	9. Perception: Jim

Come with me, oh you that are of a brave and fearless sort, into the wild weird world that is the logic of Mycroft Holmes.

Give him everything he's asking of you, and his response will be to have the shite kicked out of you 'til you can't exactly stand on your own.

Give him the opportunity to be the big bloody hero _and_ get some old woes off his chest as regards little brother, _on a twice-weekly basis_, and his response will be to have the shite kicked out of you 'til you can't exactly stand on your own.

Do all of this, faithfully, loyally, without once failing to be anything other than honest and genuine and fair to him, and in addition show a little vulnerability so he thinks he's somehow getting somewhere, and his response will be to have the shite kicked out of you 'til you can't exactly stand on your own.

It is a baffling, terrifying forest that man wanders through. As one who has been forced to follow him, I can tell you that for sure and certain. It must be awful for him. If it were my place to do, I would suggest to him that just once maybe he should try _not_ having the shite kicked out of those around him at every turn, but it's not. No, it's just my place to take it, for a while longer anyway.

Before they came for me, I was having one last decent cup of coffee with a friend of mine. She'd just spent the better part of a week instructing me in the various drugs that would be used, coaching me through the many and varied applications of electrical current to a human body, that sort of thing, so I was sitting at a fair distance from her. She muttered something I missed and I had to have her repeat it. She said, "Just close your eyes and think of Ireland."

She wouldn't have _dared_ say that if I'd been sitting any closer to her.

But for the record, for your information and hers should she ever somehow catch up on this, I tried it. It got to the stage where I even tried that. And I couldn't remember Ireland because all I could think about was the searing fucking… But I'm not supposed to be thinking about it. I'm avoiding the P-word. It makes it all too real, somehow, when you actually think the word. I'm avoiding the A-word too. The A-word's the same thing, _and_ it's melodramatic.

I'll be honest with you, I've never really had to take a beating. When I was a kid I was fast enough o get away and after that, I was never the man on the ground. I've been knocked out and bashed about a bit, and there was that car crash that one time but… But never _beaten_. Never brutally, mercilessly trounced, thrown from wall to wall by a pair of gentlemen with nothing more in their lives or their hearts or their minds than the simple act of _beating_ me.

You can't counter that. You can't talk to them because they're not authorized to talk back. You can't get away from them and nobody can come and help you because there's a door as thick as a bank vault's between you and the hallway. And you can't fight back either because they'll have you tied. Besides, even if I weren't usually lashed to myself like modern art, I'm not thick enough to think I'd have a chance.

I'm not thinking about words like 'chipped' and 'fractured' and 'internal' and 'scar', well, except I am, because I just did, didn't I?

I should probably tell you, this one's going to be a little different to any other encounter between me and Mr Holmes. For one, there's no table, and there's only one chair. They've got me laid up on one of those raised hospital-type beds, except there's no mattress. Just hard metal. Right now, I'm sat up, strapped to it. Before Mycroft called to say he'd be coming, I was lying down strapped to it. Later on I imagine that's what I'll go back to. I like sitting up better than lying down. They shot me full of morphine when it was time to sit up. Thankfully, they still hate me, so they didn't give me enough to get me off my head like before. Just enough so I wouldn't be…. So I could be a bit quieter than I'd been before.

The only thing is, I've got this shake going on in my right hand. Don't understand it, don't know what's going on there, and if it's nerve damage I swear to _God_ I'll sue when I get out of this place. Sue, or blow them all to hell, haven't decided yet. Anyway, the drugs haven't been able to kill that. And it's _really_ noticeable because… Well, I'll get to that in a second.

I've tried thinking of that as well, by the way. Blowing them all to hell. I've had marginally more success with that. Still more with the idea of peeling the faces of the hefty gentlemen like bananas. But I always end up putting those thoughts away, because they're just doing a job. It would be like letting Sebastian hang for a job I sent him on. If he did it well and if getting caught wasn't his own fault, that just wouldn't be fair.

Anyway, he's here now.

I've been practicing straightening up. My ribs want me to stay curled over, and I appreciate what they're saying, but honestly, really now, lads, it's all about making an impression. With somebody like Holmes, the illusion of strength is all you really need. The only thing I can't do is make my head sit right up straight on top of my neck. I tried and I tried, and that's just not going to happen. It's alright. We can deal with that. The dressing down the one side explains that.

Mycroft comes in, and, in fairness, he does not mention my appearance. He sits himself down without a touch of smugness. Previously I hadn't thought him capable of that, but honest to goodness, he looks honest-to-goodness. I feel like he knows what it's taking for me to be able to look him in the eye and appreciates the effort. And it's about time, frankly, that man showed a little appreciation of what I'm going through.

I say, "Before…" And then I clear my throat and try again, "Before you even start, I want you to know you've got no chance this time."

He says, "I beg your pardon?"

I say, "I'm not playing."

Is this ungrateful? In light of his being so appreciative, I mean. Is this an awful, ungracious thing to do?

Get yourself tortured for seven days and then ask me that question again. Better yet, ask me that question again and I'll get you tortured for seven days, alright?

I say, "Mycroft, you haven't a hope. And I tell you something, you picked the wrong game to forfeit, because it's a glory of a job. You'll have your work cut out cleaning up after this one. And you haven't got your brother's chance at a speed-date night of getting it cancelled."

That's a good turn of phrase, much remember that one. I was _going_ to go with plain old 'cat in hell's chance', but that one just came to me there. It's all this crippling fecking pain, it clears the mind… Oh, there's that P-word. Couldn't hold off.

Or it could be just because I quite like my cat.

This must be the morphine, all this wandering thought-to-thought. It hardly matters anyway. I really don't need to worry about Holmes today. Provided I don't tell him anything too delicate while I'm drifting, and I won't, it really doesn't matter what either of us says.

It's a bit of a laugh, actually. He doesn't think I'm serious. He feels like he can probably convince me. Bless.

"Any particular reason for that?" he asks. Ever so mild and harmless…

I bring up my hands as far as the straps will allow so he can see. They've been bandaged up until I don't have fingers anymore. "A load of reasons, but mostly the fucking mittens. Can't even scratch my arse of a morning. Is this symbolic of something? Because if it is, you'll have to explain it, and that's not a good sign. Any symbol you have to explain, it's really not doing its job now, is it?"

He ignores me. "And I couldn't tempt you to reconsider?"

"Tempt, yes. Convince, no." He gets up, pulls his chair away behind him across the room. He knocks on the door, as if to let out, but then he moves on and sits in the corner. I've got an idea what's coming. I watch him, and I try to keep my voice level; "You're staying for this, are you?"

Mycroft shrugs. "I'm told it won't take long."

Canny bastard. That's not appreciation on his face. I was wrong about that. No, that's assurance. That's him having decided he's not taking any more crap off the evil mick in the basement one way or another.

It's not the big lads from during the week. It's the outside guards, the ones that come and go with Mycroft from somewhere farther up, closer to the surface of the earth. They come in with a small machine with dials and knobs on the top and two jump leads. It's just a more precise version of a car battery I was introduced to once. The posh tart of the electrical world. It's fine. It's just the car battery with lipstick on. That's all. It's fine.

I'm trying to remember how long I lasted when this was rehearsed. And I can't remember anything. I mean, important things, now, I can't remember. Proper things. I _definitely_ don't remember being told anything about jump leads. I was told 'fine wires'. I was told 'toes, tongue or todger' and thank you very much, Sebastian for that particular little memory device. I remember _that_. But that, apparently, isn't what's coming to a load of cuking good that does me. The fuck do they need jump leads for? That's a bit heavy handed, isn't it? Are they just going to go ankle to ankle? Bloody right it won't take long, Mycroft, I'll be in cardiac before you can ask me the fecking question again.

Of course, all the morphine in the world wouldn't have me saying that out loud.

I make the effort to greet the Upstairs people courteously, to introduce myself properly, like I was taught as a boy. Don't want them thinking us basement dwellers are all evil trolls, like Mycroft probably tells them. Nightmare bedtime stories about a world where the good fellas are good to their cores and wear white hats so you know they're good, and people like me live in caves and…

Oh, right, it's the bed, the gurney thing. The jump leads go on the metal bed. Right, understood, I'm with you now, boys…

We didn't practice this. I have no idea how this is going to go. But it doesn't matter because one way or another, I'm not saying a bloody thing to Mycroft that could help him in any way to prevent what's going to happen. Simple as.

So, let's just go for it, then. The bed gets hooked up in the way you'd expect. They don't bother lying me back down flat. They put the little machine up on what is usually the table that sits between me and his Highness. They click it up to the first setting.

The first setting is a bit like one of those stupid buzzers twats wear on the inside of their hand to make you jump, except all over me. I seize at first, but that's all. It's alright, that's all. "Ah, come on. _Tickles_, that does. Come on, give it another turn there."

The illusion of strength. That's all you need with somebody like Holmes.

Next one's just this side of a burn, but 'burn' is one of my banned words, so that's the only time I'm going to think it, I swear… "Fuck's sake. I know _I'm_ a captive audience, but your boss over there hasn't got all day. All you get to do is prove to him that this won't fucking work, so get to it, why don't you?"

Setting three is that banned word I was talking about. Setting four I've got nothing more to say to them and they don't need me to either. Setting five I've got nothing to say to anybody. There's more beyond that. You'll forgive me, but I've bitten my tongue literally and it seems best to extend that out to the metaphor.

Illusion of strength. It's strange where your mind goes at the top of a great agony (there's that fecking A-word and all). Mine goes to people, _friends_, and one of them, I forget which saying, "The good thing about getting electrocuted is you don't scream." Which me, being a delicate soul that had never suffered those terrible agonies (well, I've started, haven't I, and anyway it's appropriate), I didn't believe that.

But it's true.

It's because your body goes so tight, see? Jaw clenches up and everything. Nobody fucking warned me to get my tongue out of the way, the _bastards_, I'll have them all strung up for that, every fucking one of them.

I lost count of the clicks, the settings. Then I lost everything else.

Next thing I'm even aware of is Holmes, Holmes saying, "Enough."

And his shoes on the floor coming over to me. And then, after the footsteps, long after it must have happened, the end of everything, and that I've relaxed again. I can't see. It's all red. Red with black and white spots on it, and the black spots bloom white and the white spots bloom red and the whole fucking thing starts all over again.

Next thing is one of the Upstairs people saying, "Careful of the bed, sir."

And him saying quietly, "Thank you." Standing at a safe distance from me. "Reconsidered yet?"

Me, I say, "Tempted, yes."

They don't go through the settings this time. This time they just turn it on.

Twice more I get tempted. That last one's bloody difficult. That last one it would be just so much easier to give him a sign and for him to turn it off and for me to say, Go, take off, with my blessing. Godspeed you black emperor and don't worry about your precious country these couple of days, I'll have naught to do with her. Piss off and just leave me alone.

But no.

I can't close my eyes. Muscular contractions, don't you know. But I can think. Here at the top, last setting, I can think. I think of men on fire and men who would fly, and setting their wings alight like the sun so they come crashing back down where they belong, and I think how Lucifer started out an angel, and all he knew in his life for sure was that he wasn't built to spend eternity bowing and scraping and singing the praises of a detached and impotent God, and I think how the heavenly host tore itself apart over that, and that hell couldn't be all that awful a punishment if you know you've left that sort of mark behind you. Then I think nothing.

When I come round, they're gone. Their jump leads are gone. Their painted whore of a car battery is gone.

Now things are back to nearly normal. Just me and Mycroft. Nearly normal – I'm still strapped to a bed. And now I can't much talk. I can taste blood, but I can't much talk.

But as it turns out, I don't need to yet. I work at waking up my throat and Mycroft starts in. This dark, low voice at first, just getting started. I'm having a bit of trouble clearing the black from round the edges of my vision. I focus on the self-hate in that voice, the way a man at the bottom of a well concentrates on the circle of light at the top.

"You would ask me for the worst of it. I don't know what you've got planned and in the end it doesn't matter. You would ask me for the worst…"

He doesn't look at me, not once. And glory of glories, holy of holies, he's got his jacket off. Tie's still done up, but there's always next time. For now, his _jacket_ is off. Hanging on the back of his chair. I could live another week on just that fact. He's sitting forward, over his knees. Missing the table, I think.

"The worst for him is not just one event, but several. There was an attempt at… an attempt on his own life, almost nine years ago. It was a strange time, and I wasn't there. Busy. I'm sure you remember a certain break-in at the National Gallery. I can't give you details, because I don't know them, only that he fell into a depression and tried to overdose. There was an incident a year later that saw him beaten and left for dead, and one a few months after that which… another overdose. Never could get out of him whether or not that was intentional."

He starts to get angry. Something he's said, or just the pressure of it, it starts grating on him and he gets angry.

"I don't see what good this does you, you know. These aren't useful facts, not for anyone. I don't _know_ the ins-and-outs. It's all the same, all over and over again. It's only what you'd expect, after all. You couldn't make up a more bland, banal sort of…. Oh, why bother?"

This is good, this business of just shutting up. Apparently this does the trick. Look at him, gassing away like a drunk and me, not a word. If I'd known I would have cut my tongue out before I came in here, spared a lot of hard work and hassle.

One thing, though, I'm glad I can't talk. I'd be laughing at him right now. I know he's baring his soul, and I know I have to be respectful of that, _appreciative_, but he's just… I mean, there's missing the point and then there's this. This is the psychological equivalent of taking a piss when you're hungover. He's missing the point because he's sititng right there and he doesn't see that this, _this_, this _now_, him as he is in this fucking beautiful instant, _this is the point_. This is gorgeous. This is everything I came here for.

They could wire me up to the _moon_ and back and I'd survive it for _this_.

You don't get it, do you? Just like him. Missing the point. God, I wish the other Holmes was here. He'd hate me, yeah, but he already hates me. This, he would look upon and he would _respect_ it. This. Glorious, fucking, _this_.

'Why bother?' When I die and they do the autopsy, when they take out my heart to weigh it against a feather, they'll find the words 'why bother' scarred across it as if by fine, white-hot wires.

He goes on, "The worst for me was the night I had him taken into rehabilitation. The way he fought. As if he would die."

And then he shows me why he took his jacket off. He undoes a very fine onyx cufflink with a little snap in the perfect silence and rolls back his cuff.

It is not quite a circle, but it is perfectly round. A perfectly round patch of his white skin, fenced in by a dotted line of red dashes, little scars. Bitten. Human teeth. Bite marks. Left forever. I could die. Take me to hell in this perfect moment and hell will be nothing to me. I won't even feel it.

Finding something of my voice, I begin, "I'm…" Then, for the second time, I clear my throat and go again, "I'm sorry." He thinks I mean I'm sorry for _him_. It's all over him. That look people get when your pity is just justifying to them the pity they already feel for themselves. He thinks that's what I mean. It only makes it all the sweeter, taking it away from him. "I'm sorry, but you have to learn."

He looks up. There's no confusion. He skips straight to rage.

"I told you," I tell him, while he's refastening his cuff. He does it in a hurry. He does it like I've just caught him doing something foul and very personal. "I said it as soon as you walked in the door, I wasn't playing today. This works two ways, y'know. You threaten to shut up, it stops working. _I_ threaten to shut up, it stops working. No, I'm really sorry, but you have to learn to be civil when somebody's making you a civil offer. I know you made an effort here today, but you only made it when electricity proved ineffective. Nah, sorry. Send the lads back in if you have to, but it's not happening."

The illusion of strength, see? This is how the illusion of strength works. It's like when somebody calls you on the phone, and you pretend you're in a good mood, and the more you talk you end up in good mood anyway. Fake it, like a friend of mine would say, until you make it.

Or until he takes off out of the room in a huff with plenty to think about. Mycroft knew it before today, but now he's sure; he can't hurt me, because he doesn't understand what I want. Watching him go, and the door close behind him, you could kill me now and I'd have no fear of what waits.


	10. Wait: Mycroft

"I think I'm going mad." This is the moment I open the door. This is his opening gambit. He's still bed-bound, though by my request the straps have been removed. Staring dimly into space and not at me.

"Really. And whatever makes you think that?"

"I'd walk through _fire_ for a Swizzels Drumstick… Anyway, how the hell are you, Mycroft? It's been _too_ long."

Two days longer than usual, point in fact. I'm not sure quite how aware he is of the passage of time, so I don't say that aloud. Not that I have any illusions about being able to throw him off his game or impede his schedule in anyway. No, that's long gone. That was an old idea and he made a swift and unforgettable point of putting it down. No, the very simple fact is I am aware that being even that much out of touch will irritate him.

"Well, I wanted to give you some time to recover."

"Bollocks you did." Slyly grinning, the way a close friend will pry loose the details of sexual conquest, "How'd you get on?"

I'm two days late. That's how I got on.

Just after our last and most disastrous interview, eighteen different civilians, honest, hardworking, innocent people, found themselves targeted by major terrorist organizations and crime syndicates from all over the world. Each had been individually set up to look as if they had something these various bodies needed or desired. It wasn't _one_ attack, it was eighteen, and it led into a spiral of repercussions and collateral damage which is still far, far from finished or clean or spent. The country is overrun with belligerent and frequently warring parties. The casualties, while disparate enough for the spate to go unnoticed, have been immense.

I'm two days late. But that's not the answer I give him.

"Rather well, considering we didn't know what we were looking for."

"Yeah… I really am sorry I did that to you. I know you don't believe me, but honest. I know you didn't really leave me any choice, but it wounded me to the depths of my soul to have to place in jeopardy the tenuous trust that just barely exists between us, in that way."

Just in case he really has started to lose his mind, "Oh, really?"

All the mock-contrition falls from his face. Falls away like a paper mask cut away from over that same old grin. "No, I'm lying through my teeth. Thought I'd try it. I thought, after that first one there, I'd tell the truth for the _whole_ conversation barring just one thing. Maybe a little thing, maybe a big thing, haven't decided yet. See if you catch it."

Mad? No more so than any other time. "I'd rather you didn't."

"Well, I have to do something to break up the monotony of my days in captivity… Anyway, you don't really get a say in it. I need the practice. It's something I'm going to have a go at when I get out of here."

"I would have thought slander and deception would have been very much your everyday life."

"Oh, _yeah_. Grand, big, epic delusions! Everybody looking at the da Vinci while the Vermeer takes off. The replacement of felled dictators under cover of democracy. The Bank of Iceland job. Holding an entire country to ransom from inside a torture cell… That, I can do."

I know. That's why he's here.

But then again, perhaps I should rephrase. Perhaps that is only what _brought_ him here. And it is what I had presumed he wanted. 'Grand', he said. 'Epic'. Large-scale. Why should this little sojourn with us have a purpose any different from the rest of his life? And there _is_ purpose to it. All his ranting and doubling-back, everything that, until now, has made no sense whatever, it's all to an end. That much was clear from the moment we went to take him. He'd packed a bag.

Has this been my mistake?

"And you intend to branch into the… _more personal_ sort of dishonesty, is that it?"

"Something like that. 'Personal' is a really good word for it, actually… See, where I've earned my stripes is in _bending_ the truth. Taking what you've got and using it to make people believe something _very_ slightly different. But the one I'm getting ready for, it's… well… it's a whopper, Mycroft, I'll not lie to you, it's a big'un. There'll be sufferance for it. There'll be blood. But it all has to start with the words and… Really it's just bringing myself to actually _do_ it. The lie itself is all laid out and ready like a pressed new suit, but actually _putting it on_… that's a different matter. Hence, practice."

There is something in his voice when he talks about his difficulty. It is as though saying even this much begins to choke him. In any other subject, any other human being, I would not question that it was genuine. With Moriarty the question is natural, it _must_ be asked. And yet I can't tell you how quickly it drifts inconsequentially from my mind.

Because I have not interrupted, perhaps because he and I had so little opportunity to chat last time round, he continues, "I've been informed, by a number of highly accomplished liars with whom I am acquainted, that the trick to it is to hide your little lie in a veritable butcher's window of true things. All the real, shiny, inside bits of something hanging up, looking tasty, being absolutely true. And my one little plastic pork-pie, display purposes only, just tucked into the corner…"

What he's telling me is that he's spent his life learning to build convincing butcher's windows, and it is only this last which now eludes him.

Which begs a question, but the question itself requires another to be asked first; "So? Told your little lie yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then why are you telling me all of this?"

"Pity more than anything. You're just so clueless. I'm giving you enough that, come the time, you'll realize everything you needed to know was all spread out before you in this room." That's it. That, right there, _that_ is Moriarty's lie.

I wouldn't like to believe I'm quite so stupid as he thinks. This is a trap he intends for me to fall into. Like his 'codewords', his messages out, forcing me to analyse every moment, he wants me to pick over everything that has already been said. He'll never have to give up anything new, and he'll extract his sickening payments all over again. No, I'm not so stupid. His supposedly _cryptic_ statements, scattered throughout these interviews, well, there's a reason I've been happy to ignore them until now.

To study Moriarty any more closely than I already have would be to join the ranks of those who see drug references and paedophilic memoirs in the nonsense of Lewis Carroll.

All of a sudden he sighs, as though staying here with me is really rather a chore. "Mycroft, mate, you're not saying much. Are you feeling alright? Or just watching yourself after last time?"

We won't discuss 'last time'. I won't be drawn into that. Our previous session was an experiment. It proved a failure. That's all there is on the matter.

But again, perhaps I should rephrase. It was not, after all, a total failure. He'll see, soon enough, what came of it, what I was driven to. When he didn't respond to the tactics of the barbarian, he rather forced me to turn to the tactics of the prince. But we'll come to that.

"If it helps you any," he continues, "it hurt like fuck-knows-what. Does that help you?"

He doesn't talk when the room is empty. They have reported as much to me. Occasionally mutterings, but he always checks himself very quickly. This, I think, is what the silence does to him. I don't answer, and again, he feels the need to fill the gap.

"It made me think and all. Like, for instance, I'm thinking, for me to still be alive, you must believe I have something to tell you."

A conclusion drawn from healthy paranoia. His mind, then, is still very much intact. "You always have something fresh and interesting to tell me."

"Ah, but you didn't know that!" The sound of my voice is a shot in the arm. He tries to sit straight before his bandaged wounds remind him to stay where he is. The pain takes none of the sudden light out of his eyes, however, and it all fixates on me as clear and unavoidable as a pointing finger. "Not until you picked me up, you had no way of knowing that, and anyway, none of that would be happening if I wasn't in here. Nah, no cigar, Mycroft. You'll need that third Shredded Wheat in the morning to trap me like that."

He narrows those flaming eyes, smiles at me as if he already knows the answer. Very likely he believes he does.

"Why'd you bring me in here? I mean, _I_ know it's because I went after the prince regent, but what excuse did you give the brass over finally bringing me in?"

"You'd gained access to some very sensitive information. We needed to know – "

"Buzz! Not true. You already knew all about Reenie Adler."

"They didn't."

"More plausible. But I still don't believe you. At that point I should have just been killed. But me and you both knew that wasn't going to happen, didn't we? Now how would we both know that? What reason could I possibly know you'd have for keeping me alive?"

To find out why. To point out to him, in person, that his mad professions contradict themselves. What he would call 'the Greenwich job'. What Sherlock refers to as 'the pool'.

But again, he can't take the wait, or the quiet of it anyway. "Do you want to know what I think?"

"No."

"I think you and me are here for the same thing."

Maybe.

But this isn't the day to discuss it. Later. When he tells me he's going mad and I almost believe him. Then it'll be time to discuss that. That day, he'll be incapable of lying to me, never mind promising to do so. That's when we'll discuss that.

Today, instead, I try to show him, by signs and body language, that I'm just as tired of the waiting as he is.

"What's the _event_ this time, then?"

"Ah, I've nothing on."

"I beg your pardon?"

He shakes his head. Stops pointing at me, rolls back. He sits at a slouch that looks almost comfortable for him, staring into space again. "Zip. Dead days." I must be staring. He feels it and glances back round. "Well, I wanted to give you a chance to recover."

"Here's another pointer about lying; don't push it too far outside your typical character."

"Oi! I'm a _very_ kind person, I'll have you know. When I like somebody."

"Naturally," I scoff. "But you'd never think I was so gullible; you had no way of knowing you'd want to refuse me last time."

"_Have_ to. I never wanted to. I told you I was sorry."

"And then said you were lying."

"Well, maybe that was the lie."

A day in the near future, he'll answer me honestly and tell me everything I brought him here to find out. That day, he'll be broken. Dead-eyed. Dispirited, finally. It's not so far away I have to fill the gaps unnecessarily. And the day after that he will be on his knees looking forward into his own grave, muttering his final pleas over the sound of the cement mixer that will delete him from existence forever.

So with all of that in mind I take a long, deep breath, and remember that today doesn't matter at all. Last time mattered. Last time gave me incentive.

These are the tactics of princes; to take the mistakes of yesterday and turn them into the victories of tomorrow. Today doesn't matter at all.

"Well," I say, with as light a heart as I can manage, "If you won't be entertaining, why don't we play a different game?"

"You've made up a game for me? Aw! You shouldn't have."

"My pleasure. It's the game where I tell you I've got something really quite awful lined up for you. Nothing you could have rehearsed. Nothing physical either, and not the sort of psychological attack you're thinking of."

"Sounds _exciting_. What is it?"

"A surprise."

"And if I don't tell you everything and all the answers here and now, it goes ahead." He laughs, as bright and loud as I've heard since he was on his feet. Honest. "Oh, I'm sure it's awful. Oh, I shiver and I quake! Woe and terror, please Mr Mycroft, don't do it! I don't-"

"You think I'm bluffing."

"Yeah, that was rather the gist of that sarky little outburst." Still smirking, still with that glow, he settles back again, touching a fractured rib that must hurt when he laughs. " Sorry. Got carried away."

I am nothing but calm. I am nothing but calm. "Then you won't answer?"

"_No_!" he barks, still excited, almost childlike. "You've made me all curious. Of all the people I'd ever expect to turn the game back at me, _come on_! How can I say no? I want to see what weak excuse for a plan you come off with now I've caught you."

Fine.

I stand up to leave.

I am nothing but calm.

"I'll have them bring it in this evening."


	11. Reality: Jim

I couldn't sleep. Usually after he's been I can get a kip, but I couldn't sleep. Nobody came in, nobody poked me, nobody blasted a fecking air horn every time my eyes started closing, I just couldn't. But I think they were waiting for that, though, because in the end they came in and shot me up with something and sleep found me without my asking.

But I dreamt such very pleasant dreams down in that sleep that I didn't mind how it found me. He promised me wonders, did Mycroft. I was thinking and thinking about what he could mean and that's why I couldn't sleep. He promised me all sorts of heavenly things and I honestly don't think he can deliver. That's why I had such beautiful dreams, thinking what he could possibly do to me that could even get into the same atmosphere as me. I'm so far away. It's hard to explain.

I can see you. You and him and everybody. Real life, I mean. I'm still here, I still walk amongst you. But I'm not really _there_.

Whatever Mycroft Holmes might think he's got to offer, he simply cannot touch me.

Do you know the first I think I might _really_ be in trouble? When I wake up and there's a bowl on the table full of Swizzels lollies. Fruity Pops and the fizzy half-and-half type ones and, yes, Drumsticks. That's when I know, if nothing else, he's been paying attention when I've taught him how to play.

But that can't be what they 'brought in'. I was promised more than sweets. I'd be _content_ with the sweets, certainly, but he told me I was getting more than that. Maybe I'll know more when I open my other eye and start sitting up. This, as I'm sure you can imagine, is a bit of a chore. The other eye, for one, is swollen as closed as it is. Has been for a couple of days now. Nobody seems all that worried about me potentially leaving her with an eye-patch.

Next time I see Mycroft I'll mention eye-patches and it'll be seen to soon enough. Last thing he wants to give me is an excuse to talk about pirates.

Anyway, the only way I can get up is the way stroke victims do it. You have to break it down, look at it scientifically. For instance, if I put my centre of gravity up there, that's going to let me get my arm beneath me and take some the pressure off. If I can shift back these couple of inches, that brings my centre into alignment again, and the back of the gurney can support the bulk of my weight. Think about each muscle group and how you want it to contract, what way you should be leaning. Ask not what your body can do for you, just tell the fucker to get on with it.

Throughout this whole awful process, I become dimly aware of something like another presence. Not quite somebody in the room with me. Just a sense that I get and I can't place it. I know it, but I can't place it, give it a name. It's something from outside, see. The real world. It's something from before I came in here.

It's that buzz. That dim, back-of-the-throat feeling you get when you're in the dark but there's a light on in the hallway. A hotel feeling. Humming.

A television.

I sit up and shift round and discover that I've got a television. Great big flat-screen telly at the end of the bed. That's what they've brought in. I've got a television.

It's an interesting play, in that I have no idea where he's going with this. I bet he's watching, though. I'm on camera here. There's another room down the hall and it's got a two-way mirror. He's around somewhere, he's got some way to watch.

Now that I'm sitting up above them and I've got better perspective, the bowl of sweets isn't the only thing on the table. I've got the remote control too.

But alright; that's the game. Sometimes you've just got to pick up and play. So I unwrap myself a Drumstick and kick back with the buttons. It's all very comfortable. Sometime while I was sleeping they've even given me a pillow. They put it at the wrong end of the bed, but… well, maybe they didn't want to wake me. Now I pull it up and tuck it in behind me. Mycroft can play along more often if it gets me perks like this.

The big green number in the corner of the TV screen says we're on channel 2 at the minute. Sadly, I'm not getting the BBC, for some idea of what time it is, see if I've made the news at all, maybe catch _Holby_, no, none of that. All I get on 2 is interference snow.

Also, as it turns out, despite this being a really nice telly I've been granted, it only gets terrestrial. Five channels, no RTE even. Pure old-school, channels one-through-five.

I told you all about 2.

Seeing there's nothing on, I go for a flick through. Let's start at the very beginning. Let's go to channel 1.

Oh, that's a nice house. That's a _really_ nice house, actually. Victorian features, minimalist interior, but a distinctly contemporary feel to the décor. I like that runner. Somebody with real taste did this house up. Taste, and the wallet to back it up; that's a genuine Derwatt over that fireplace, you know. I love the blue in the pallet, it's a very strong statement theme running through. I want to see more than just this sitting room.

Mostly, I want to check if I left the stereo on in my bedroom the day they came for me.

Yeah, this is my place. They've got a camera in my front room. Nothing's moving, so I don't know yet if it's a live feed or not.

Ah, so what? Nah, Mycroft, you'll have to try harder than this. So you know where I live, good for you. I knew that. You came to give me a lift that day. Anyway, I know where you live too. Nope, sorry, don't care.

Let's see what else is on.

ITV, for once in its miserable existence, is actually quite interesting. Sadly, I would seem to have missed _Coronation Street_. I may never know who that poor baby's real father is. But the pain of never knowing is eased considerably; I've stumbled across some sort of experimental decorating show. You know, like _Changing Rooms_. Except, this one's not going much changing. As a matter of fact, it looks pretty much identical to the one I'm lying in. I'm not in it, though. No, there are three people in white crime-scene suits in this one. They are stretching a cheap white sheet over a skinny mattress. They have tools. One of them is fixing a pair of shackles to a wall, just above head-height. Another is ratcheting a chair to the floor.

Dungeon chic.

Like I said, it looks very much like the room I'm lying in. Stupidly, I find myself looking about, as if the three attendants in their alien-greeting gear might just be hiding in the corner. But they're not.

Then, in a moment of frankly _inspired _intuition, I reach out, and with the end of the remote I rap on the wall next to me.

Just like magic, the three men on TV all look up, all look in the one direction, all look towards me.

It's a live feed. They are right next door. They are preparing another room for another guest like me. For a very brief moment, I flip back to channel one, but my house is still empty. So I flip back and they're going about their business. I suppose I was still knocked out when they were drilling into the walls and floor. It's a strange thing to watch. My first thought, and be kind to me because I'm just coming out of a drug-induced sleep so I'm allowed to be off my game, but my _first_ thought is that they must have done all that for me.

That hotel feeling I was talking about, this isn't what I meant.

My second thought is the sensible one, the obvious question, 'Who?' And the answer? The answer, when you're clever like wot I iz, is obvious. Nobody. Nobody's coming. They've got nothing lined up. No, they just mean me to _think_ I'm getting neighbours. That's all it is. Psychological warfare. I'm supposed to sit here and fret myself to death wondering who they've gotten to and what I stand to lose, who could tell them what, asking a hundred pointless questions a hundred pointless times, driving myself mad so I'm in no fit state to meet Mycroft when next he lands in. Nice try, your Lordship. No prize, though.

I'll be honest with you, I'm starting to get a little bit disappointed. If this is really what he thinks is going to get me…

I flip back to channel one. Naturally, the living room is still empty. Naturally. It's my house. I'm here. Who would be there?

Anyway, I'm not done exploring yet. I skip up to Channel Four in the hopes of some sensationalist documentary-making, something about a deformed kid or maybe even mild pornography disguised as social science. And for the second time, what I find is even better. Beautifully better. Makes-me-wonder-how-he-could-think-of-this-as-punishment better. Glorious.

I've never been there myself, but I've heard enough about it, and I've seen a picture. More to the point, I know the view out the windows; I have often walked down that street before. But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before. All at once am I… well, on the first floor, looking across a whole flat and out a window, into the street where he lives.

221B Baker Street, London, NW1.

He's put a camera in his brother's place. For a blissful second I ask myself if I'm even supposed to have this, if maybe this is a mistake. I know he doesn't make mistakes, but wouldn't it _nice_? Just this once? I mean, you make one mistake in your life, make it on _this_ scale.

There's nobody home right now.

That's alright, though, I can wait. God, _Jesus_, that _wallpaper_… I know he's a tenant and he can't do anything about it but honestly? I'd move out.

The rest is as it has been described to me, but there's a difference between somebody telling you facts, giving you their impression, and seeing it for yourself. That difference is as great as that between a laugh track and a live audience. I can't tell you. I just can't. Every detail is perfect and is _mine_. I take it in like it's going to be switched off any second. There's a skull on the fireplace, a painting of one on the wall, messy desk, tidy desk, comfy chair, hard chair, two windows, the _butterflies_, oh, _God_, the butterflies, the pinned-down butterflies, the _specimens_.

You can mount butterflies two ways. You can mount them with love and adoration and because they are beautiful, and mount them for art. Or they can be _specimens_.

I can't tell you.

Why should I, anyway? Why should I share it?

Well, alright; here's one more thing we can share, but the rest is mine. Let's share the dark wood carriage clock between the windows. Let's share how it ticks by two hours and it is, by that and the fading light outside, about eight o'clock.

Still nobody home.

It's okay. He's out on a case or something.

I flip back to check if anything's come up on BBC2 yet. But it's still just snow.

I flip back again to my place, and just in the act of going back to Channel 4 when I could _swear_ something ghosts by my living room door. I get this one little flicker of unmistakable Baker Street (it might just be the wallpaper, but my lingering impression is just '_maroon_') before I'm back home.

Nothing.

Nothing moving, or not in the living room anyway. But since nothing's happening on any other channel (I check, and the boys on ITV have done their job and left the room pristine), I stop to admire my own panache as a decorator for a while. What harm could it do?

Maybe ten, fifteen minutes go by. It's getting dark out and Sherlock's clock is hard to see (nobody's home, nobody's put any lights on). But it's not much more than that before I realize I was right. There _was_ somebody passing the living room door.

Her name is Danielle Mies. She's a friend of mine. She's a thief I use very frequently, and not just because she knew Sherlock a lot of years ago before I did. She's the one Mycroft talked to before, remember? He didn't pick her up, then.

And do you know what she's doing, why she's there? She's come round to feed my cat while I'm incarcerated. I never asked her to. But she's coming into the living room now, with her shoes off, with McLeod curled up in the crook her arm and nuzzling his little face in under her chin. He's a fickle bastard, y'know. Never mind who owns him and takes care of him and puts a roof over his head. In the land of the sealed tin, the woman with the can-opener is queen.

It's an awful reference, an awful thing to admit to even knowing, and anyway she's on entirely the wrong channel for it, but all I can hear in my head is, _Day One, in the Moriarty House - Danielle is feeding the cat_...

Oh, shut up. Everybody knows what that guy sounds like. It doesn't mean I've ever had anything to do with that soul-destroying, life-eating fucking program.

Utterly uninvited, the vile little house-breaker curls up on my sofa and my traitor cat stretches his body next to hers.

Right there on camera, she does what I'm doing, and goes channel-surfing.

She finds _The Third Man _way up in the Sky channels. I can tell because she plays air-zither over McLeod's belly whenever the theme music comes on. I know this because she loves that music, and that film.

Mycroft'll have a hard time picking her up, if that's his plan. She's a filthy fighter, and very fast. And if she's about, Moran couldn't be far away. I told them to stick together. Not least because they're integral to my exit plan.

Anyway, I still don't believe he's actually going to do anything.

This is all just to make me tie myself in knots thinking it over.

Nah. No way.

Still nobody home at Baker Street. That wallpaper, though. It's hypnotic. Or it's a morbid fascination. On camera, it's like it's moving. I think I'm just watching _that_ for a while.

Still nothing on BBC2.

Channel Five is another dead station. Well, no, that's not quite true. No, because if it was dead, there would be snow, like on Two. No, Channel Five is showing a live broadcast from the Saatchi Gallery of a new Hirst entitled simply, 'Black'. It turns the television into a mirror and gives me my best idea to date of exactly what sort of mess they've left me in. I don't linger very long with Channel Five. I really have no love for modern art anyway.

ITV are awfully proud of the concrete torture chamber they've put together, because it's still on screen.

Baker Street's completely black now. Just streetlights. I can't see the clock anymore. I imagine it's getting late by now.

Dani falls asleep with the TV glowing over her and her hand between Mac's ears.

Still nobody home at Baker Street.

I couldn't tell you how long I sit up flicking. It's not my fault. It's because I was knocked out so long. I can't sleep. Nobody's fault. If he thinks I'm going to turn myself in circles wondering what he's up to, he'll be a long time waiting for it. I'm only awake because I'm not tired. I can't sleep. That's all. Just can't sleep.


	12. Leverage: Mycroft

My men, the ones who put this little spectacle together for Moriarty, believe me to be unaware, but they have a bet. Twenty pounds, I believe the wager is. The weaker of the two, a sadly rather romantic gentleman, is determined the first question asked will be regarding Miss Mies. The other is more of a bodyguard. Perhaps it is simply that he has spent more time in my presence, gotten to know the parties involved, but he is equally determined that Moriarty's chief interest will be elsewhere.

I have turned the handle of the door, I have not opened it yet, when the latter may prepare to collect upon the marker, "Is your bloody brother off on his holly-bobs or what? The dirty stop-out…"

He might have commented on my returning just a day after we last spoke. He might have said hello, or let me enter the room, but apparently there's no time for that. Very promising.

"And Watson too. If it was just the one of them offstage I wouldn't be worried, but that's both at once. Why is this _on_ if there's nothing to see?"

His watchers told me everything I needed to know before I came down here. That he slept only when it couldn't fight it. That his first act upon waking was to check over all available channels for any change. Of course, there were none. The room next door is still ready for an occupant. Miss Mies, then, was still asleep. I'm informed she's since gotten up and gone home. Sherlock and John are still in Dartmoor, running after phantom dogs so far as I can tell. Whatever keeps them happy, I suppose…

But my detainee doesn't need to know that.

"Is he on a case? Come on, I've been watching this for hours, the suspense is _killing_ me. _Something_ must be going on." I have, by now, had time to be seated, to take a quick glance over my shoulder at the screen. I open my mouth to speak, but he doesn't give me a chance, "Oh, don't give me all that mild-mannered, how-should-I-know bollocks, all that 'am I my brother's keeper?' shite, I'm not up for it."

"Really, I haven't a clue. I _meant_ for you to see him. Just like him, letting me down when it counts."

"Nah. Nah, no way. You wouldn't _hand_ him to me like that. Come on, I'm not really supposed to buy that."

"Aren't you?"

He's been here almost twenty-four hours now. I saw to it that he was left undisturbed, and that he was given no other occupation. The report given to me states that, aside from occasionally flipping channels, he has been staring at my brother's empty flat for the last seven hours. I've never seen him so agitated. There have been so many people spoken to, so many statements brought to me, people he's worked with or on behalf of, and no mention of anything even remotely like this. It is a massive strain for him to look at me even as little as he does, and even that with his eyes turned out to the side, still watching.

I maintain the same expression. What he referred to as _mild-mannered_…

"What are you even doing here? I told you yesterday, there's nothing on. You'd think you'd be using your free time a little more wisely. Honestly Mycroft I'm offe-" He breaks off. Loses his train of thought midsentence, all because the top of a lorry has just passed the windows of Baker Street.

And to think I wasted so much time. _Listening_ to him, analysing our conversations, getting drawn into his little _game…_ To think I thought so much of him.

At heart he's really very simple. He came here for one thing and one thing only. And here it is, and he would have it, would hold it in his hand in the same death grip that now holds the remote control, were it not showing off on the moors somewhere.

"Honestly you're what?" I ask. A personal pleasure. Can't quite help myself.

"Hm? Oh, um… offended, I was going to say. Here's me giving you a break and you can't even be appreciative of it."

He's not ready for this. Any other time I've come to see him it's been planned, scripted somehow. Everything I could say he was ready to counter. Right now I'm not sure he'd even notice if I answered him. I let him watch another minute or so without interrupting.

He says, with the tense voice of one whose dinner guests have sat past midnight, "You don't have to be here. I told you yesterday, I've got nothing to play. You don't have to tell me anything. You knew then you had four days to-"

"Oh, four, is it? I was planning for three."

A mistake. All that time wasted and now, finally a mistake. Not much of a mistake, but more than enough for me. He doesn't reply. The message is supposed to be that one day more or less makes no difference to him. But for once, and perhaps for the first time, I see through him, see him berating himself to be more careful. A small slip can lead to a bigger one.

"Oh, stop smiling."

He hasn't looked at me. I was unaware of having smiled until he says that, until it goes away.

"Jesus, I can _feel_ it. Smug bastard. Sitting there, look at you, practically _giggling_. You're like a little _girl_. 'Ooh, he tripped up, oooh, lucky me!' Wind your neck in. Small slip only leads to a big one if you don't spot you made it, y'twat." I didn't say that aloud. What he echoed, I know for a fact I didn't say it aloud. "Or, y'know, if there's something _physical_ to it. That'll do it. Like, for instance, you give somebody who's quitting _one_ measly fag when he's having a really rough night, and a couple of weeks later he's clawing half of London open looking for someone to sell him a pack. That sort of thing. That's a small slip leading to a bigger slip. Still, when it's only nicotine, you don't mind, do you…" I think he feels himself to be under my gaze; he glances round, a look on his face that says quite clearly what he now states, "Don't give it out if you can't take it, Mycroft. Now tell me why you're here."

A few long, long seconds pass. I glance at my watch.

He continues, "Stop enjoying the fact that I'm the one asking that question for once and tell me why you're here."

Six o'clock.

I ask, "Aren't you bored? Isn't there anything else on?"

"Nah. I need to get Virgin in here or something. If I tell you the name of my banker, do I get Bravo?"

"He might be good for Sky Arts."

"_Jesus_, forget I spoke. My assets can consider themselves safe. You're in a good mood, Mycroft. That frigid secretary of yours come round, did she?"

I turn my chair to face that screen. "You must be bored."

"I am a bit, but it was this or the cat cleaning himself and I felt a bit weird watching that." He changes channel, to demonstrate. The animal in question is asleep in the light near the window. "It's more that I knew how he felt. I always need a shower if Danielle's been round. What was the point of that, by the way?"

"Well, we didn't have an address for her."

He looks at me, quickly, changes over to the empty room next door on the third channel, back to his own living room. Once he's confirmed that nothing has changed, he steadies again. "Beg your pardon?"

"When I met her before, her skirt was covered in hairs-"

"Ah, well now, a gentleman never asks, Mr Holmes."

"-From two different cats."

He almost looks impressed. At first I fight down any feeling of gratification, but then, why not? Why shouldn't I accept it? "Wahey," he mutters mildly, "Who needs Junior, eh? So you found her at mine and you followed her home." I try to take the remote control from him. Instinctively, unthinking, he clutches. Looks down at my hand before he'll release it. I change to the second channel. "Oh, we got tuned in, then, did we?"

"What happened? Baker Street too riveting?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Fifteen-love to the lanky Brit. Y'ever see an Irishman play tennis? It is neither a capable nor an attractive show. So where are we? Are there people on this channel or just more…?"

'Interiors'. He would have said interiors.

He says nothing.

We know the place on screen is not Miss Mies' personal residence. Rather it's a sort of halfway house she uses for work purposes. In case she gets caught. Whether she's there because she and Moran have been kept so busy running the work of their employer during his incarceration, or whether she knew we were following, is utterly irrelevant.

She's at home, currently. Standing over the cooker. She's dancing, if that strange, small shuffle people do when they believe they are alone might be called dancing.

All the laughter goes out of Moriarty. All the joking. It's clear from the way he tenses, from his expression, this has all crossed his mind long before now. Then, he was brave enough to dismiss it. Now it's real to him.

You know, sometimes I begin to feel I know him too well.

"I told you before," he says, "that you were telling me naughty fibs when you said she told you everything."

"Everything she wanted to. Nothing useful."

"I feel like I should say this now and spare you the trouble, but she won't break any more than I have. She'll be worse for you, if anything. Anyway, she doesn't know the things you're looking to hear."

"I won't be asking her to speak."

Loudly, suddenly… If I didn't know better, _angrily_, "Don't talk _shite_!" He reaches out, and with the side of his hand beats the wall next to him, on the empty room beyond. Snatches back the controls and shows it to me. "What's in there all about, then?!"

"Oh, she'll be there. And yes, it is to be used for everything I'm sure you can very well imagine. But Miss Mies won't be required to speak."

She has her mobile phone in her hand now, answering a text message. Moran, more than likely. We've had access to his message records for several weeks now. Nothing incriminating, but they check in with each other every four hours or so. That's how I knew they were the ones to strike at, if I were forced to make a strike. They're in charge of the business in Moriarty's absence, so removing one or both from play couldn't but work in our favour. More than that, however, they've been with him a long time.

I don't need records, or his confession, to know it's been almost nine years since these three met. Too long to keep things less than personal, I should think.

Moran has proved elusive. But the long pause, the way he watches her, I feel like we've made the better choice anyway.

"_I'll_ be expected to talk, is that what you're telling me? She gets bounced off the walls next door and I can stop it all if I only tell you everything? I hate to disappoint you, but they probably won't be her screams of agony I'll be listening to. There's nothing, _nothing_, your lot can do to her she hasn't already had done consensually. I'm just telling you now because I know you'll be uncomfortable."

I smile over. "We'll see."

Going on for ten-past-six. They're running a little late. But I'm comfortable. Help myself to the Parma Violets from the bowl on the table. It seems he's not partial to those.

There are three of them, when they take her. They're _supposed_ to be highly-trained tactical agents. I seconded them from MI6 for the occasion. And yet, they burst in like the average TAU from the Met. As the first one approaches, Mies empties a pot of boiling pasta water across his chest, and headbutts him when he stumbles. A second she curls past her with a single straight arm and brings his head crashing down into the worktops.

A woman, the instructions said, but don't underestimate her.

Why do they never listen?

At any rate, the third gets the better of her. Single blow, square on the jaw. Not enough to finish her, but it distracts her long enough for the second to find his feet again, to grab her arms. Holding his head, the first gets up and places the sack over hers.

I do not comment, because I don't think I'm supposed to hear, but under his breath Moriarty mutters, "Aw, good woman."

I straighten my lapels as I stand. The little people in that far away flat have cleared out. Another empty interior on screen, and it'll stay that way. Since there's nothing there to watch, he looks round. When he speaks, he's bright and jovial, he's everything I've come to expect from him, the untouchable cover up. But he can't make the eyes above the grin smile with him. There is a rage there, an intensity, which while I am glad to have brought it about, to have inflicted it upon him, makes me glad that he cannot move against me.

"Y'know," he says, "if they'd just brought her a drink and asked her nicely, she'd have been down those stairs and behind those blacked-out car windows faster than you could call her a slag. She likes the boys from the Cross. She says she always has fun with them."

Mirroring his confidence, "Not these ones."

He steels himself. The grin turns terse smile, matches me. No jokes. "So what? I'll see you again when the screaming stops?"

"Well," I tell him from the doorway, "If you're ready before then, you can ask for me. How's that?" Today, for once, I decide I'm having the last word, and close the door on him. His little epitaphs never serve that great a purpose, after all.

Outside, my men are waiting, and Anthea. They start away, and that first step or so, I follow them. But as we pass the second door, lying open, the room inside ready, I tell them to go on ahead. That I'll wait. I am, after all, nothing if not patient.

Nine years. In a way, I've been waiting for _this_ much longer than I was waiting for Moriarty. Not so important, not so terrible a burden, but won't it be nice? Just that little bit of closure. So often they seem to evade me, to get away with it. Not just _him_ and his whole damned web, no, but so many others, all these years, from all over. They elude me. They escape. Danielle Mies has evaded me for nearly nine years, and only rarely even left the city I myself live in.

So I wait.

It takes them about half an hour. What's half an hour in the grand scale of things?

She's still conscious when they bring her in. Still kicking and screaming too, and working along a boundlessly creative string of insult and profanity. They half-carry her down the stairs between them. Thrashing so much she's lost behind her hair. But at the foot of the stairwell she tosses her head back. Sees me. She stops shouting, stops swearing. Her feet find the floor again and her entire body corrects itself, finds a familiar curvature. Fluttering her lashes, "Hello, _you_. How's that _gorgeous_ brother of yours these days?"

"Far from you."

She laughs, "Pity. You know you're barking up the wrong tree, don't you? Jim in there-" She nods as if she's seen this hallway, that door, a thousand times, totally sure of herself, "Jim couldn't give a fuck about me. Not the way you're thinking. It won't work."

With a brief glance to ensure her arms are being held very tightly indeed, I take a step closer and tell her, "Have fun."

She bares her teeth, the same maniac joy as her employer. "Enjoy the show."

* * *

[A/N - Alikai - they can't all be showstoppers! No, honestly, I can understand why you've been underwhelmed. My intention was to give the boys a couple of quieter days before they go into the endgame and start tearing chunks off each other, if that makes any difference. And in response to anybody else who was confused by the last chapter, I know what you meant too. Hence the quick back-up post tonight. Hope you're all still here. I hate to reuse an excuse, but I mean it all to be part of a build-up to these last desperate gambits. Hopefully I won't be disappointing anybody again any time soon. ('Anybody', of course, includes my two leads, and I'm a bit scared of them now. No. No, I shan't be disappointing anybody.)

All my faithful hearts,

Sal]


	13. Eroding: Jim

ITV have got this new program on. It's alright. Nothing special. It's a bit brutal, actually. There's no plot, no mystery, no question, so far as I can tell. I tell you one thing, though. The sound is _unbelievable_. You really feel like she's right there with you. Or, y'know, in the next room.

Naturally I've stopped watching Baker Street so closely. After all, at least ITV has something _happening_ on it. But I do keep flicking back. Just to check the clock. There's still nobody home, which is starting to feel a little bit funny to me, if I'm honest, but really, honestly, I'm just checking the clock.

It's been about four hours. I have to tell you, it feels like a little bit more than four hours. About forty minutes in Danielle went limp for a while, but they kept at her, and in the end she sat herself back up to take it. To her eternal credit she's been up ever since. She's starting to get a little hoarse. The three gentlemen who brought her in and who have stayed with her ever since are starting to look bored. Or confused, maybe. Like they just don't know what else to do to her.

I can tell you from where I'm sitting and not a word shared between us, she's loving that.

They never expected her to last this long, but I did. As soon as they woke her up that first time, I knew this would happen. She did it out of spite. Them poor lads should have just let her drop off at forty minutes. They were the ones that turned it into a competition.

There's one of them, fat bastard, the one she threw the boiling water at, who decides he's just not having it anymore. To hell with torture, he thinks, to hell with getting her to talk whether that's the plan or not. Nah, he just can't be having her anymore. He brings a fist down in the side of her head and Dani hits the desk still tied to her chair. She's not getting up this time.

All the shouting dies down. The two bastards who aren't fat look at the fat bastard and he just sort of shrugs. Then one of them leaves the room and I start getting myself ready for another round.

Not with the brutes, you understand, oh no, not with the Bastard Brothers. Me and them, that's all finished. Even just today, I've been able to get my left eye all the way open again. We're done with that end of things. I'm waiting for Mycroft now.

Honestly, if I could trade it all off for another punch in the face, I would. No disrespect to Danielle, I know she's suffered, but me and her could swap places. He could play the rest of the game out with her, couldn't he? Or just this one round? I'm unfit for work; she could cover for me. Like a temp, of chaotic and criminal intent.

No. Wait. Sorry, she's unconscious. Never mind.

I can't see how his Lordship could have took off for brandy and cigars at the club, so I imagine he's upstairs. I hope the tea they've been giving him is the same piss they've been doling out to me all these weeks. Anyway, what I mean is, what I'm getting at, he's on his way back down for another chat, because Dani's stopped making a racket, and well, he did promise.

And what I'm really getting at, when I make a point of telling you it's been four hours and Mycroft has never left this facility, is that we're in the endgame now. That was sort of the point, after all. I gave him the opportunity and he took it.

Three days off, four days off, it hardly matters. He knew he had time and he knew this was the time for us to stop dancing and-

No, no, I won't finish that metaphor. I'm not so far gone I don't see where I was going with that, and I'm not in a good enough mood to say it anyway. I'm not strong enough to get a picture out of my head once it's taken hold either, so I won't go into that. The clock at Baker Street flashes up in negative every time I blink. That's bad enough. Dani slumped across the table. That's another one, a newer one, but it's starting to give the clock a run for its money.

Aw, Jesus, enough of this. Skip the rest of it. Suffice to say, Holmes comes back. Suffice to say I'm sitting up and I'm looking a bit stronger than before. Just a bit, though. Not too much. I've got the shakes in that hand again and I still don't understand it. I'm sure the big lads that used to come in, I'm sure they thought I was joking when I said I would have every one of them either sued or made into a suit, if it turns out to be nerve damage. But they'll not be thinking it's a joke when they're hanging up next to the Armani, that's all I have to say.

Mycroft sits himself down and dangles one puppet-looking leg over the other. He nods past me, through the wall, at his latest victim. "You're a heartless sort, aren't you?"

"Bet you had a bit of trouble killing all that time. Can't imagine you get too much conversation out of two gorillas and a woman of mystery. Or did you get yourself a private room? You look tired, Mycroft, what have you been up to all this time, watching our Dani get battered? Hm? I've got your number, y'filthy Marquis." And no, before you ask, there is absolutely _no_ point in my saying that. But I might as well keep him going. Be a laugh if I'd hit a nerve in there somewhere, wouldn't it?

I'm not getting anything off him but that weird cross between smug and vapid he passes off as his normal face. Can't blame a man for trying.

Anyway, he needs to think I'm angry, somewhere deep down in my soul where I'm doing my best to cover it up. It's not very difficult at all to put this across. It's just keeping control of it.

He says, "Careful. How long do you think she'd stay loyal if you were losing her her fingers?"

He won't do that. He won't. I do, however, need Danielle's fingers where they are for a bit longer. Might be best to let him have that one.

But I can't let it slide entirely. She's not eight feet away from me. I can't just let it all go. I tell him, in honest, truthful answer to his question, "Forever and ever, amen."

"That's arrogance."

"Nope." And I shake my head and I hope he knows I'm trying to be straight with him for once, "I have no understanding of nor explanation for it. I find it ridiculous, I find it baffling, but I have also found it to be true. You won't shake her. At least, not any more than she wants to be shaken." I let him consider that for a while. And the really strange thing is, he seems to want to consider it. Where his brother would dismiss the whole thing as my megalomania and her unforgivable sentiment, Mycroft actually thinks about that one. I give him the second he needs. Then I go on, "Of course, like you said, you don't need to shake her."

"No."

"You won't shake me either."

"We'll see."

"Jesus Christ!" I tell him, sharply, as if I was pissed off and I've been holding it back and now I've just sort of snapped, and it's really not all that difficult, like I said, to give that impression. "What's the point of this? What do you think I'm going to tell you, Dani or no?" And then I make the effort to turn it all into a nice, quiet smile for him, "Why am I still here, Mycroft?"

He doesn't have an answer for me. Not right away and not a direct one, which means that no matter what he pulls out next, he's not really answering this particular question. Same as Danielle, they never expected me to last this long either. Which, really, I would just call that an ill-researched scheme all over. People like us, me and her and Moran… There are others, but mostly us, we need to be there for the end. For the parlour scene. We are the whistle that blows, or the credits that roll, we are the fat lady that stands up to sing. We last because you can't have a finale without us.

Sadly for Mycroft, this particular quality runs in the Holmes blood, too.

Hm. Holmes blood. There's a comforting thought for a dark day.

Anyway, what my Aryan companion does to cover up the fact he's got _nothing_ is he reaches over to the table, picks up the TV buttons, and flips back to BBC2. Now, if you'll remember, BBC2 were showing a subdued domestic comedy starring the same future-BAFTA winner as is currently over on ITV. And also next door. But they've lost their lead, and have had to change the program. Very familiar program, actually.

It's another room. Like mine, like Danielle's, the same bleak, laboratory hospitality. It's what's behind Door Number Three, is what they'd have me thinking.

There's no timer, no clock, no sign of today's newspaper; nothing to tell me it's a live feed or even current. It could just be one single frame taken from before Danielle arrived. But then Mycroft speaks and I'm not sure it matters if I believe the room is real or not. He says, "What would you do if we got them all?"

"Star Wars cards? That's easy, I'm only looking a shiny Jabba, and I've got double Vaders. You get 'em all and I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."

"You _know_ what I'm talking about."

"Aye, I do. Dani on the left of me, Sebastian on the right and me here, stuck in the middle, with you. I know you're not taking any of these warnings I keep giving you, but I saw Seb get shot and he never made a noise above a whimper. You'll not get him screaming."

"No. Him, we would just kill."

Bloody hell! That was a bit casual, was it not? 'Oh, awfully messy business this torture, no, let's just put that one's brains across the walls and off to watch the cricket, what ho!', for _fuck's_ sake. _I'm_ supposed to be the mental case. This is _my_ practically-padded cell, thank you very much. Christ, if he keeps that up, I'll be able to walk out of here without him. 'No, Gorilla number one, that's him there, the maniac, why look at him, with his dead emotionless eyes. Now, off to watch the _fecking_ cricket'…

But that whole rant was silent and internalized, and I haven't actually said anything. So Mycroft continues, "Yes… Him. Milverton, Morgan. Clay. Flaversham. Raffles-"

"Ah, now, he's Dani's mate, not mine. I've never used him."

"Then it won't matter to you when he disappears. Then there's Conway, Olivier, Roxburgh, Price…"

"Why?"

He starts, as if I've pulled him down from a beautiful dream, all these _relatively_-innocent heads getting blown off… "Pardon?"

"Why would you do that? How does that help, or indeed _harm_, anybody?"

"Oh, no, _no_," he tells me, with something close to a laugh, as if I've made a frankly _adorable_ mistake. "It doesn't."

For the love of God… Once, _once_ you let them take a turn in the game, and they do rather well, and then they go mad. Some people just aren't built for villainy. They can't take the pressure. Anyway, might as well let him get it out of his system. I've still got a Drumstick left in the bowl. I've been saving it, but this delusion is probably going to take a while straightening out, so I sit back and unwrap it. Take a quick look over at Baker Street. Nothing happening. Time still passing. Dark out, but the streetlights are giving me the edges of the clock hands. I figured that out in the early hours of this morning. Quick look over at my place again. Nothing. Just McLeod wandering about like a lost soul asking where the dinner lady's got to. He's not impressed. If he starts scratching up my armchairs, the furry little prick's out on his ear.

I'm thinking through all this, quite happily drifting when Mycroft says, "But what are you without them?"

Cheeky, fucking piece of… "A criminal genius of unforeseen scope and splendour, a man of, I am reliably informed, wealth and taste, a style icon and the only person that's managed to keep your brother amused for ten minutes at a stretch since the dealers were making him dance. Did I leave anything out?"

He gets the remote back, to make sure I'm only watching either the new empty room, or Danielle still slumped. There's a doctor there now. I've never laid eyes on him before. Then again, I imagine I'm usually out for the count too when he puts in an appearance. Half-interested, "Raving lunatic."

"Well, that's a given. Are you ignoring my last little point there, by any chance?"

"No, we'll come back to your last little point." Yes. That's the one thing me and him can both be certain of. We'll be coming back to that, in grand, fine style, and there won't be moment's rest 'til we've got that one torn open before us. Oh, yes. Holmes blood. That one's going to spread on the table like something that sweetheart Hooper might whip up before lunch. All these things I'm thinking, he's thinking too. "We'll come back to that. When you're not changing the subject."

Yeah, well, it was a shite subject. The only answer I can give him is obvious, and it's stupid. "What am I without my network? I'm a man building a new network. No more, no less. Go and shoot them all. See what good it does you. No, actually, you know what? See what good it does Sherlock. When you're not changing the subject, that is."

"And that's your final word on it?"

"For now? Yes."

He stares at me for a while, the way you stare at a kid who's throwing a tantrum and is a year or two too old for it. And like all the staring isn't rude enough, then he takes his phone out. He doesn't talk or anything. I'd have to pull him up on it if he did that. But he does send a message of some sort. He seems to have it prepared and everything. Just has to press the button.

And then, in the next room, there's a beep.

And the doctor standing over Danielle produces a needle, taps up a vein in her arm. He sticks her and suddenly she's awake again, sitting up, gasping.

"Adrenaline?"

"Yes."

The doctor leaves. The three grunts go back in.

I try and shape my face so he'll think that deep down where it really hurts me I'm raging with him over doing this petty, stupid thing he doesn't even need to do, just to prove to me that he can.

Mycroft leaves with this stupid little smile on his face. He's thinking, and I know he's thinking this because I made him think it and I _live_ for knowing I made him think it, he's thinking that he only needs one more little twist of the knife. One more turn. One more little shove and that's me over the edge and into free-fall.

Too late for that, don't you think?

I've been falling a long time. But falling's nothing to be scared of. Hitting the ground, yeah, maybe. Be a bit wary of hitting the ground. But falling? Falling's brilliant. You fall and you only get faster and faster, and nothing can happen to you. Except for hitting the ground, of course. It's a bit like kryptonite. Any given Superman story, you know he's probably going to be alright, because there's only this one thing that could hurt me. Him, I mean… Fuck it, why not? Me.

There's only this one thing that can hurt me. It's not Danielle getting put through the mangle, but he's started, so he'll finish. No, he knows the one thing that can hurt me, and he thinks this is the time.

One more twist.

Can't. Fucking. Wait.


	14. Defiance: Mycroft

These hours are long.

I have come no farther than the end of the hallway that houses my prisoners. It's really quite pointless. The room upstairs is much more comfortable. I don't know how long I might be here. Moriarty and Mies are no more secure because I'm standing here. And yet I can't bring myself to walk away.

A little while ago Anthea came down from upstairs. She hasn't spoken, hasn't made a sound. And while nothing else of her impeccably professional demeanour has shifted in the slightest, she has seated herself on one of the middle stairs. There's an odd sort of comfort in her presence, though it serves no purpose. Can't explain it. But it makes me wonder if perhaps I ought not to have had Mies questioned somewhere she would not be heard, to have taken her off the feed that runs to his 'ITV'.

Well, I say '_questioned'_…

The damned bitch screams again. For her own part, she seems relatively unperturbed, changes it into another almost-elegant rush of maniac laughter and insult. But Anthea flinches. Looks away, as though there's something she could have been looking at.

"You should go back up," I tell her.

"No," she says. "I'm fine as I am."

She is watching me, and under her gaze it suddenly strikes me, how very strange is the feeling of having someone try to gauge your thoughts. These long weeks, my most frequent interactions have been with Moriarty, and he, at every turn, has had to gauge nothing. Has seen it all.

But I can't start second-guessing now. Whether or not he knows what I'm contemplating… I don't see how he could but, there's only so long one can go on calling a thing arrogance when it is constantly being proven. But whether he knows or not is irrelevant. It's my last recourse. Not because I've run out of ideas, not because I can't keep him any longer, but because it is the last thing I ever wanted to do.

These hours are long with it.

But he will not walk away from me. My victory, my hard-fought, long-kept from me victory, that will not walk away.

"Anthea, I need you to go and fetch something."

"From the office?"

"No. From the house."

She knows now. What I need her to bring here, and why, and why it has played on my mind, and what it means. She knows. And she will stand, with elegance and not another word, and go about it. She knows better than to question me, than to think I could make this particular mistake.

"Are you sure?"

I don't mean to chide her, it's only because I didn't expect her voice, "I beg your pardon?" But there is a sharpness in my tone I'm afraid she'll take the wrong way.

She doesn't. Nothing changes. She looks back at me with the same determined honesty, whether I've snapped at her or not. And in the same level tone, she repeats, "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

She nods once. The rest is as I had imagined it initially. The issue of her question, her _emphatic_ question, is far from being a priority. That can be considered another day. For now she's gone. My last move is on its way but, more to the point, she's out beyond Mies' choked, nasal sobbing. It's an odd sound, and very distinctive. Mustn't have rolled with the punch, caught it on the nose. It was ensured, from the beginning, that her captors knew how important her looks were to her. Her face hasn't been getting any special treatment.

Besides, Moriarty would have to have something _very_ compelling for her to leave here alive, something so incredibly special I can't even give an example. Nine different countries want to execute her. In the interest of solidarity, global oneness, building bridges, I think we can overlook the fact that Britain isn't one of them.

Time passes. It doesn't take quite so long about passing now that my decision is made. Waiting _for_ something is always excruciating, but I find that when there's nothing else _but_ to wait, it's easy enough to get on with. When a thing must be done, what other attitude can one take, what other perception can there be? Others may disagree with me. The science of necessity, however, has been my life's study. Others should not question me.

The next marker of time I have, one of my men appears on the stairs with a phone. Anthea's. Wonderfully anticipated. "Powers That Be, sir," he says.

I thank him and take the handset. Though I follow him to the upstairs hallway, I wait until he is out of sight before I speak.

"Yes?"

"Holmes, old boy." For security reasons I cannot give you the name attached to this new voice. Suffice to say he is within his rights, by rank and by experience and by age, to take this gratingly familiar tone with me, and that I am bound by those same factors to take it. "How goes the day?"

He perhaps does not know the source of the quotation. If I were to follow the script, I would respond, _Well for King James, but I am sorry for your Lordship_.

More than likely he knows the source of the quotation.

"Well. I expect we should be all neat and tidy within the week."

"All ship-shape then."

"And Bristol-fashion," I tell him. If one isn't prepared to _complete_ one's platitudes, one really shouldn't begin on them.

"Only that's not the reports I'm getting," he says. I could ask what reports and from who and what exactly he's implying. But he will tell me not a word more than he already intends. "Really, Mycroft. How is it?"

"Relentless. But really. I do think we're close to the end. He's breaking."

"And you?"

There are certain things in this life that no man need bear from any other, regardless of status. "Excuse me?"

"It's not personal, Holmes. Only there are those who believe it's become rather… well, personal, with you. We're afraid you might have been losing sight of your ultimate goal here. There's a reason we authorized you to keep him before his execution-"

"I understand that and-"

"Just don't lose objectivity. There are those here who had suggested that, for these closing moments, if it is how you say, we might send somebody-"

"No." Else. He would have said else. Somebody else. "No, that won't be necessary. Before the week is out. You'll have this over and clean and all worthwhile."

Nobody else comes in for the end. It will be, as it has been from the beginning, him and I. The woman dead, Moriarty defeated, no more of this. That is to be mine. So long now I have wanted that to be mine. Nobody else comes in for the end.

On the far end of the phone, that voice sighs, "If you're sure."

"_Quite_," I say again, "sure."

End of conversation. Nobody else comes in for the end. Whatever the status of my _objectivity_, the result for them will be the same. Come the finish, it will make no difference and they will not question me again.

Nobody else comes in. It's my end. This is my project. He is my subject. _Months_ of work, a _relationship_ of sorts, all of that goes away if somebody else were to… But they won't. The end is mine.

You must understand, my superiors have no way of knowing about my most recent decision. The sacrifice I am about to make. They would not question me if they did. It is the staunch and perpetual belief of this great country that those men who offer up considerable personal sacrifice will be rewarded with glory, and with victory.

I am still standing, dead mobile phone in my hand, when Mie's keepers come up from downstairs. I check my watch. "What happened? That was barely ninety minutes."

At first they laugh. The joke they think I'm making is about her earlier stamina. I watch them and they sober. "Couldn't keep her conscious this time, sir," one of them offers. "It's the best for her. Keep her going, on and off. Make it irregular."

A second adds, "Doctor said to let her come round on her own this time."

The reactions of the others tell me the doctor said no such thing. Sentimental fool. He should be removed from her presence before she takes advantage of him. I'll have him replaced with one of my own. And that _frightful_ creature running MI6 these days can keep her 'best men' in future…

As they pass me, I hold out my hand. "The key."

With a certain reluctance, they give it over to me.

I've missed something. Everybody's gotten awfully stand-offish, even mistrustful. I'm missed whatever triggered them. But that's another consideration which can wait. At this especial moment, what is much more important is to remind myself that I am justified, and vindicated, and that I am righteous in this. That my objectivity has nothing to do with it.

I go downstairs and for once I open my own door. Hers, not his. He can wait. Since she's unconscious, he'll be expecting me. He can wait for it, and watch me with her, and wonder about it.

They left her where she fell. Down against the wall, with her feet pointed at the ceiling, twisted at the waist so her head is down in her arms. I want to see her face, but don't want to touch her. It's all I can do to, with the toe of my shoe, move her one foot closer to the other. Since she was brought in she's been partially stripped and this helps make her less… _obscene_. As if that were possible.

The thief, the seducer, the expert manipulator. Where there are feelings they are as puppet strings to her, and where there are none she can create them in mere moments.

I had thought _I_ might feel something, looking down at her, when she's powerless and broken. But nothing comes to me. Not immediately, anyway.

There's no victory in this yet. I had expected there might be. Having Moriarty behind a locked door. Having Mies in passionate agonies. The destruction of their flesh. I had expected there might be some sort of peace to be found in these achievements, after all the waiting. But I don't feel it yet. I think of how my own mind has been tormented in all of this and I know, that when all is stripped and honest, only the utter deletion of those vulpine souls will do the trick. Them and Moran. I have people working on his location even now.

There's no victory. There is _some_ sense of… ascending. Getting there. For now that will have to do.

"_This is my quest-" _Dreamy, absent singing. It almost takes me a moment to realize it came from her. She's hardly unconscious at all. She closed her eyes and they, the cowards, those I had entrusted with her, they walked away at that. Hang them… "_To follow that star_…" She's tuneless and hoarse, pauses to cough, "_No matter how hopeless, no matter how far_…"

This all has to mean something. Perhaps she faked the loss of her wits in order to bring me here. There should be some sick little message in the old, sweet song.

"Yeah."

I said nothing out loud. How can she answer me?

"Yeah, it's all about him. About how he makes you feel, sort of. Like, he gets in your head, and everything's about him. He gets to be part of you. All the songs you hear on the radio are about him and every time you go shopping you notice his favourite things and when your mind goes blank and you're not even daydreaming, you always come back to him. That's how you can tell he really likes you."

She's talking to herself. She must be. You hear of meditative techniques, taking the mind away from the body. Perhaps she's managed to escape her pain somehow. I stay. Listen. Not only could there be something useful in her bizarre murmuring, but I know Moriarty is watching, wondering.

"Do you have a fag?" she says. "I'm gasping."

Not talking to herself. I say nothing, make no move. I could give her a cigarette, but I don't intend to.

"_To be willing to give, when there's no more to give_… It's a sort of hive mind. We think what he's thinking, and vice-versa. It's a real privilege, though. For instance, Seb doesn't get it. I don't think it matters to him. He just doesn't understand Jim like we do. Even your brother… I think he's too close or something. They're too implicitly alike to _have_ to get in each other's heads… No, the real core of it, the whole big mess than is him, we get caught in that, but that's just the likes of you and me."

Her head rolls. Neck crackling. When she turns over to face me she is cooling a bruise against the tile floor. Her nose is broken, as I had anticipated, and the blood is now dried that had run down over her lips and clung beneath her chin. There's something in the image which is almost perfect, and so close to perfect that I can't even place what's wrong with it right away. Whatever the flaw, it is an affront, an annoyance not to be ignored.

She grins at me, with a chipped tooth to match her insane master's, "_To be willing to die so that honour and justice may live_." A long time ago, she and I spoke about honour, and which of us had it. She evaded me then. How strange, to see defiance in her even now. "The likes of me and you, _mon grand amour, mon petit mort, _we're special. Be proud, and be grateful; it's how he expresses affection."

The problem is her eyes. As much damage as might be _visible_, she is otherwise untouched. I'm looking at her wounds in a new light now and seeing that each and every one of them will heal completely. Her nose can be straightened, the tooth enamelled. No scarring. No permanent damage. The damned cowards. I should have kept a closer eye on this. She's a subject like any other, whether I needed her to talk or not.

A basic error, yes. Unforgivable. But easily corrected.

"Not a word for me, Mr Holmes? I had hoped we'd chat. Jim's been taking up all your attention of late. I'm so jealous. No? Nothing?"

For her? Never. Nothing.

"In that case then, before all that disgust all over you makes you charge out of here, let me at least thank you. I've always wanted to thank you. Never could get the timing right. But here's a time and here's my thank you. I don't know if you remember, or if I was just that week's event, but you tried to have me killed once. Long time ago. I did that job for you and then you wanted me dead. And that's how I met Jim. And you'd have got me. And Jim was actually going to top himself, he was so bored, but then we happened. So none of this could ever have come to pass. Let me thank you, for the weird paths we three have walked together."

I won't charge out. I won't be predicted or dictated to anymore.

"Are you ready for the end?" she says. "Because I tell you now, he is. Has been since day one. He's wound up fit to spring right now."

They have not been communicating. She has been busy and even if Moriarty could have tapped some code through the wall, she wouldn't have heard it, and I would have been informed. They have not been communicating.

"No, dear, I just know these things. So do you, if only you'd admit it." A long, low chuckle starts deep in her stomach. She hasn't the breath for it, keeps coughing and clearing her throat, but the laugh never stops. That's when I get up. There's no shame in it. No one but she and I will ever know what was said here.

Following me out, "_And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest._"

It's hard to know which of us is supposed to find meaning in this, which of us she thinks she is narrating. But as I leave that room it goes out of my head; there's a shadow falling down the stairs from the door above, out of so much light out there and disappearing into the relative gloom down here. I look on and Anthea comes to me. She has a black binder beneath her arm. She holds it with her hand slightly cupped, so that her fingers don't quite make contact. As though she hates to touch it.

She's looking at Mies' door. "I thought the point was _not_ to question her?"

Despite the fact that I have absolutely no obligation to explain anything to her, "I only looked in." Though there's nothing to look at but frosted glass, she continues to stare. As firmly as I dare, I take the binder from her. This time I don't make the mistake of giving an order which sounds like an offer; "Go upstairs."

"Yes, sir."

"And tell those fools from Six to remember she's a thief. Her hands. They need to pay a little attention to her hands."

A moment's hesitation. Then, "Yes, sir."


	15. Vindication: Jim

It's not a minute after he's told that dark bint of his to get Dani's hands wrecked when the lanky fucker has the barefaced fecking _cheek_ to present himself at _my_ door. He meant for me to hear that crack about her hands, y'know. He did. After what he had done to my hands. After telling me he was going to get her fingers cut off her. And me needing her hands fecking _functional_, Christ's sake, _fuck_, fucking _bastard_. He comes in, but I've got her on screen, in the corner of my eye.

"You just can't keep away from me these days, can you?" I greet him. "It's alright, y'know. I understand. I have this effect on people. Dani in there says it's all down my big black eyes. I don't think she means the kind I've got at the minute, though."

"Shut up," he says.

Just that. No more than that. 'Shut up.' All abrupt and forceful and, well… _contradictory_. He brought me here to talk and now he's telling me to shut up, so which is it? I've half a mind to do it, see what he makes of that. But we already played that game. Anyway, we've gone way past that point now.

Anyway, he's got this big black ring-binder under his arm. Quite hefty too. Quite full.

I know what _I_ think it is, but I'm _not_ getting excited until he tells me for sure. I'm not. Promise. Cross my heart. I'm not getting excited. The only reason my toes are all curled up is the spasms running down my legs while the muscles fix themselves, the _only_ reason, swear to God. But I know what I think that file is. I know.

With as much force and anger as it's possible to show while moving a dwindling supply of sweets and a TV remote, he clears the table we used to sit at, him and I. Drags my forgotten chair out of the corner. Sets us up opposite each other. And as I obligingly, and without being asked (which demonstrates an incredible willingness to participate on my part, don't you think?) start to ease myself down off the gurney, he drops the folder onto the table with a thunk that shatters the quiet. On screen, in the next room, Dani flinches. Crawls over to the adjoining wall and puts her ear to it. Me, I'm just getting over that _noise_. The only thing louder than us talking in all these weeks has been the noises I was making myself. I don't know about you, but when I'm getting my toes boiled off or whatever it was, I don't really notice my own screaming. I don't know about you, or anybody else. I suppose that topic of conversation doesn't come up all that often, somehow.

Oh, my God, I need to see another Christmas. I need to live to see another Christmas so I can try that over the turkey.

Mycroft probably thought the appearance of the file would worry me more. In a way, I'm grateful to be thinking about a turkey dinner. And with the _gruel_ they serve in here… Must tell Dani to get a turkey in when she's leaving. She can get it defrosted while I'm wrapping things up.

Like Christmas presents! See what I did there? Ah, still got it. Still got it.

This is me _not_ being excited, by the way. Where was I, where am I? Oh, aye, his Highness has just dropped the black and holy book of mysteries (if indeed it is what I think it is) down on the table.

I say, "Well, that's a bit dramatic."

Before he can tell me to sit down as well as shut up, I put myself in that old accustomed chair. Fold my hands up on the table, since they offend him so. Quite near to the file. If I just stretch out my forefinger I can touch it, but I won't. Not until it's mine. I sit there, telling it with my eyes, _Soon, my pretty_.

Mycroft looks me over. Probably mistakes everything I'm choking back for blatant curiosity. But he doesn't offer anything, not right away. He says instead, "End this."

I can't tell you how good it is, for him to _finally_ admit that I'm in control. That I'm the one who gets to call time. He says it with this grimace too, like it kills him. And more than that; like something else is killing him. _Everything_ else. I told you before; I didn't want just another little piece of his heart. I can tear that off any time I please. I told you before, I wanted it all.

"Love to, Mr Holmes, but what on earth is this delightfully doom-y looking tome between us?" Come on, y'prick, say it so I can start getting wound up about it.

"You never need to find out."

Yeah, well, I never _needed_ more than food, water and oxygen. That doesn't mean I don't like my telly. Nice gambit, Mycroft, but another day, because I know there's nothing in there for me to be afraid of. "No. No, you can't fire the white rabbit at me and then expect me not to follow. And after it made such an _entrance_. Black rabbit, I suppose. Appropriate, that, for you and me. Makes me Alice… I can put up with that. No, d'you know what, I can't, and I'll tell you for why; we'r enot doing an Alice episode. Everything has a fucking Alice episode. I swear to God, _Doctors_ had an Alice episode. I don't do daytime TV, by the way. Sebastian does, he's never really gotten over that regimented army lifestyle; if you don't tell him what to do he just sits there and-"

Mycroft slams his hand down flat on the table. Tells me again, this time louder, to shut up. And when I've done so, when he regains his composure, he snarls and rolls his eyes from my head to where the table cuts me off and they linger at my hands while he growls at me, "What is _wrong_ with you?" Oh, the disdain… There's a lot of it. I was trying to do a metaphor there, but just, right, like, _loads_ of disdain. No point burying the facts in fancy words. And what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me is it's all sitting there on the table and I could touch it if I didn't have my _heroic_ self-restraint to keep me from stretching out and _oh_, my God, it's right _fucking_ there!

I was right. All of this, the whole point of it, I was _right_ and now it's here and he _brought_ it. I knew it existed.

Don't tell Moran and Danielle I didn't know for sure until now. I can't be certain how they'd take it, but it probably means more pain for me. If I can still feel pain. If I'm not so sunk in constant ache that a new sting will only ever fade into the general symphony.

He says to me, "You can bring all of this to an end."

Yeah, when he _shoots_ me. Man still thinks I'm daft. That line didn't work on Day One and I'm bloody sure it won't work today. But all of this has the feel of the salesman who thinks you've made the wrong choice, who keeps asking and asking if you're sure and gesturing to the other, better whatever… Last chance. Pointing to the exits, one after the other.

"Why are you so nervous, Mycroft? What's in the binder? Because it _looks_ like A-Level biology notes, but I bet it's more important than that. The way you're getting on and _look_ at you; you're shitting yourself… The way you're getting on I'm thinking this must be some _really_ nasty move your ready to play. You don't want to, but you will. Oh, it must be a really slimy shitshow you're ready to put on. Could an old-fashioned villain like me learn a trick or two yet?"

He puts out a hand and draws it towards him. "Then you're determined. You've left me no choice."

"You're absolutely right, I haven't," and I start getting out of my chair, pointing over his shoulder, "It's straight out this door here, is it?" He lifts his eyes but not his head. Makes me laugh a bit. I sit myself back down. I knew I wasn't going anywhere right now, but it's funny to keep him going. Anyway, I want him to remember that, somewhere in the next couple of days. When I'm walking out anyway, I want him to remember that I offered to walk and he wouldn't let me.

Silly boy. Brings it all on himself…

So here it is. Last turn-off. You'll have noticed, because you're smart, how he's already given me two fresh, simple chances to 'end this'. Twice I have rejected him. Tradition, and the De La Soul song, dictate that three is the magic number.

"Look, what I have here goes beyond you and I. Now, you've left me in no doubt that there's only one thing you care enough about to have used against you. And loathe as I am to use it, this folder contains the means to do so. After all, what's a game of chess without a white king to fight for?"

"Now _careful_ there. I said we're _not_ doing an Alice."

That's enough of a rejection for him. He opens the file. Takes the first of many pages out of its plastic pocket and hands it across the table to me. He does all of this with ritual and solemnity enough that it might be The Book of the Dead, and we that read from it might be damned for all eternity.

That's a wonderful feeling. That's freedom. Once you're damned, once God has had you lasered off the palm of his hand, there's nothing you can't do.

But I beg your indulgence just a moment. See, I need to concentrate. This document he's just handed me, it's dense, all small print and legal and medical talk. Normally I can read all that shite, wouldn't pose a problem for me. I just never realized how much my head was still swimming until I had to read something. I do get some words really clear, though. 'Danger to self and others', I get that. 'Compulsion necessary'. 'Removal of decision-making capacities'. I get the words that are in bold at the top of the document, stating what it is a copy of.

Section three of the Mental Health Act. I get that much.

"Section," I say out loud. I say it soft, like this had never previously occurred to me. I glance up out of the bad eye where he won't see to check if he's buying it. It's gotten more and more difficult to gauge my acting as time's worn on.

Mycroft isn't even looking at me. He's picking a thread out of his cuff, but it's just an excuse to look at his hands. Not at me. _Certainly_ not at the file. "There's only one way to stop your _game_," he spits, "And that's to make it so there's no game at all. Take your opposite number out of play."

"Section," I say again, like the word means something I can't quite get at and then, with revelation, with shock, "_Section_; you're having him _sectioned_?"

He nods, "I could. There are two signatures on that paper. All that's required is a third."

Sectioned. Carted off. Men in white coats, rubber room, chained to the walls, straightjacket, barred windows, Nurse Ratched, pills in little white cups, full body searches, oh, horror of horrors, _group therapy_… Getting tied down to a bed and having electric run through him. Don't know if Mycroft's considered that particular little irony.

_Sectioned_. He'll have Sherlock _sectioned_ if don't play along. That's clever. He could have done prison, but the clever bastard would probably prove his own innocence or something. It'd never stick, and anyway, I'm not sure how long he'd last. He could have packed him off somewhere, but that depends far too much on brotherly cooperation. Junior'd see himself back just to _annoy_ him. But _sectioned_. There's not even a _time-limit_ on that. They keep you 'til you're good and done, and that's by _their_ standards.

See, Sherlock's no actor. He'd be too proud to play sane and get himself out. And he's too mad for them to let him go.

_Sectioned_… Mycroft, you beautiful fucking bastard, I salute you.

Hope to _God_ none of this is showing on my face. Hope to God I look shattered and trying to hide it. That's what I'm going for. But when you're _really_ feeling something honest, when honest feelings are a rare and intriguing thing, it can be very difficult to keep it all in check.

I say, all terse and raging, like a man who knows he's beat, "No. No, I don't believe you. I know how this works. You need full assessments, two doctors and a psychiatrist, you need proof that he's a danger, though… well, that last one, fine. But the doctors, the psych, there's no way you got him to go through all of that. Nah, sorry, no way. You're talking crap again."

I will not clap my hands like a seal or giggle like a teenager. I will not clap my hands like a seal or giggle like a teenager. I will not clap my hands like a seal or giggle like a teenager.

"Is it so difficult to believe I could have thought of something you didn't?"

Yes.

Look at him smiling. Bless his bamboo-blend Brooks Brothers socks. "You know I had it all done by proxy," he says.

I do, yeah, I know that.

I look at the sheet in my hands like I'm going to tear it to confetti and he snatches it back. Tucks it back in its little pouch. Hands me something else.

_…incident during which the subject was arrested, and placed in temporary custody. The incident in itself is not the cause that we would report to the committee, but the result, in that a fellow prisoner requested that he be moved to another cell within ten minutes of the subject being placed in the same room._

The proof. There's pages and pages of this proof. Danger to himself and others. Not functional in everyday society. To be removed from the general population in the interests of overall safety. Oh, look; I've remembered all my med-talk, my legalese.

There's pages and pages of assessments and reports. I'd tell you they're all made up, but, y'know, just because they haven't spoken to him directly, just because the Subject wasn't aware of being assessed, that doesn't mean they don't know he's mad. I spent five, six minutes, _tops_ in the man's presence and I know he's mad as I am. It's called genius.

Out here in the world, it's called genius.

Let me tell you a little something about genius. You see as soon as you take a genius? And you take the application for a Section Three and you tuck it into his pocket? Then he starts to look pretty much like a mental case. As soon as you present him with three doctor's reports in absolute agreement that he's mad and with a file full of proof of all his mad doings and sayings, then he's mad.

As soon as you put him in an institution, he's mad.

Love it, Big Brother, love _everything_ about it.

I tell him, "You're lying." I give him a pause so he can gloat while I get a look at the rest of that page.

_…questioned by police after an Underground Station busker reported that she was being 'stalked'. Physical evidence proved the subject never followed the girl or saw her after their initial meeting, but that the impression he left upon her was sufficient for her to believe he had followed her home…_

You have to laugh at that one; that's proof that the silly _bitch_ is mad, not him. But like I said, you put it in this file, you put this file next to him, and oh, poor girl, he did some _brutal_ stuff to her brain…

I tell Mycroft, "You're lying."

He takes that page back. He leaves me another few carefully selected documents. He closes his folder, gets up. He leaves me shaking my head, channelling weeks of pain and anger into an expression which _very_ plainly gives back these emotions. I don't care if my face is a caricature; the acting doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be convincing.

And anyway, I _am_ actually a bit pissed off, because he's taking the folder back with him, because it's walking away with him? But I'll be seeing it soon enough, so I'll live. I watch it go and wave to it. Such sweet sorrow and all that. See you soon, gorgeous…

Once he's gone, I take those few sheets back to the bed. They're from separate and disparate sections and I need to start memorizing. I sit up, with my back to the wall. With the hand farthest from the camera, out of the way, I reach back and tap the wall.

Dani sits back, takes her ear off the tiles. Any tap, any communication at all, she knows what that means. But just for fun, I go on. A few short taps, a few long taps. A pause in the middle for a space between words.

Dash-dash-dot, dot-dash-dot, dot, dot, dash-dot. Pause and listen to her giggling. Dot-dash-dot-dot, dot-dot, dash-dash-dot, dot-dot-dot-dot, dash.

* * *

[A/N - The best laid plans of mice and Mycroft... You all know how this ends. It ends with the words, 'Alright, let him go', and not before then. Did you really think I'd disappoint you that way?]


	16. Empty: Mycroft

I had wanted to sleep. I had left everything in hands I thought were capable, hands which had coped admirably for quite some time now, and gone home. No harm in it; let Moriarty turn a few things over in his head, regain something of myself. A night off. The _last_ night off, in fact, and with any luck the last night entirely. I had wanted to sleep, and ultimately I did, thinking about the dark that will come over him when I have done with him and they place the bag over his head.

A little after three a.m. the telephone wakes me. It seems I was mistaken about those capable hands. Mistaken about nights off. I am informed that Mies has escaped. A car is on its way.

Anthea is waiting in the back. Exhausted, but that is secondary. She's covered it with hasty make-up, to take it away, to make it meaningless. She is fierce, and stern, and has already been briefed, in order that she may brief me.

I don't want to hear it. As she speaks, I could repeat word for word what she is saying, but it feels like script, like lines from a play. Worse than that, television. Strange, strained words from the other side of glass. I don't want to hear it. Part of me is still clinging to the comfort of the word 'impossible', but there's no such thing. Not anymore. If a door can be opened then a room can be left empty.

Yes. Empty. Empty is the prurient word.

As it is told me, less than an hour ago a shot was heard not far from the facility where the subjects were held. Security was therefore tightened at the outer fence while parties were sent to investigate. Necessarily, some small facet of internal security was weakened. Due to the sensitive nature of the project, a guard was placed in the hallway outside the separate cells. _Somehow_ (a word which should never be used in official reporting) this guard was enticed to enter Miss Mies' cell. There's no reason why because we can't ask him, because he is dead. Being chained to the wall at the time, held up off the ground no less, this was something of a feat for her. Preliminary reports suggest that his broken neck was inflicted using the woman's thighs. Then from _somewhere_ (as above) Miss Mies produced a sharp and very strong carbon filament and used it to unchain herself. She then, so far as anyone can tell, vanished.

'Vanished' is the word going about. A hateful word. Far too emotive, too descriptive. Too much like having given up on finding out. 'Vanished'. The open-ended admission to defeat.

Still, I'll soon have answers. A sensation of fever, of sickening, tells me I won't even have to fight for them. Moriarty will be all too glad to boast.

In those brighter, upstairs rooms at the facility, there is untold chaos as every inch is searched. Due to the increased presence at the outer line, those who pretend to be in charge are 'certain' that Mies is still within the ground. They say this to me like I'm supposed to _feel better_.

Of all these myriad chiefs there is only one with anything interesting to say. He is young and the others are expecting him to stay quiet. He waits, chooses his moment wisely, and says something bordering insightful. Must get his name… He says, "There's one thing bothers me more than where she went, sir."

"And what's that?"

"Why didn't she take him with her?" Meaning Moriarty. He points at a monitor, to my first and most valuable prize waiting patiently for my arrival. Still here. "She stopped and talked at his door a good minute, sir. She had keys and a pass-card from the guard she killed. So what's he still doing there?"

I think this over, knowing that there is both truth and fearfulness in what he says.

The next voice, interrupting, is Anthea's. Nothing of note, nothing obtrusive. Merely, "Sir." And her hand reaches across me, and takes from under my arm the black folder.

Anyone of reasonable, logical bent will not believe it, but I hadn't realized I'd brought it with me. Anyone who has ever suffered and toiled months at a time on the same thankless task, anyone who has ever given up those graver secrets of their life, will understand.

As I go to Moriarty, she goes to find a strongbox, requesting an armed guard in a way which is not a request. Safe, away from me, away from him, protected from her. Here at the worst when I have been left certain of nothing, I trust in this. It makes the descent to the lower corridor that little bit easier. But when they open the door for me (the lock is perfect, not forced, not picked, opened with a key, with ease), I can hear him laughing. Long before I reach him I can see his grin. The tray slot, through which they've been passing him meals, she left it open for him. He's waiting for me, offers blithe and deeply unwelcome commentary on my approach. "Ah, here he comes, and a face on him like thunder. What's the matter with you? Did your umbrella blow inside out? You look like somebody's had the last Ferrero Rocher, Ambassador."

Upon reaching him, I slam the slot to. When the door opens he's pacing away with his hand to his face, "Jesus, take my _nose_ off, why don't you?" There is no petty pleasure in watching his eyes water. I had thought there might be.

The usual seats are waiting. He falls into his while his head spins. By the time he's steady I've matched him. "How?" I ask.

"How what?" But already he's sputtering, biting his lip against the pretence. "How'd the elephant get his trunk? His suitcase burst."

"How?"

"How _what?!_ Oh, the door. How'd the slot get opened, right, right… Dani looked in to say bye. She left it. It was quite nice being able to see you coming for once. Physically, I mean. Generally I see you coming a mile off…"

"_How_?"

"On her feet. Out doors and down corridors and, knowing her tendency for old-fashioned melodrama, _probably_ down a ventilation shaft."

I don't want to hear it. There's no truth to be found here, nothing that matters. What really matters? She's gone. He's still here. Everything else is just details. But I need to focus, centre myself before things get out of hand. He's depending on me getting worked up, no doubt. And so I deny him that. "The guard, then, to start with. How did she get him into the cell?"

It is as I suspected. Once he gives up his ridiculous denials, he _glitters_ at the very opportunity to tell me how clever he is, how he's outsmarted me. The whole thing comes to me as though through a fine red mist. I try ignoring it, but the haze is everywhere, and permeating, and anyway begins deep within where I can do nothing about it. Outwitted. Outsmarted. _Stitched up_. He's right. I don't want to hear it.

He stops grinning. Smiles gently, turning his head back and forth like one basking in glorious sunlight. "Do I really have to spell that one out for you? She made him promises. Reasoned with him. He was only down here because there was nobody to watch the cameras, so why shouldn't he let one of her hands down for ten minutes, give her a little recovery time. Promised him he'd be richly rewarded if he did so… Please don't make me put it in any clearer terms."

"Not in the shape she was in."

"That tongue of hers is still in her head though, and silver as Helen Mirren. She's very persuasive."

Enough. It's easier to move on than anything else.

"And the pick? Dare I ask where that was hidden?"

There's a pause. A drift in his gaze as he remembers and a tremble in his lip too. Distaste, perhaps, or anger. _Something_ anyway, and this in itself is almost enough. "Yeah, we need a word about this. She bled again for that. Which really isn't cricket, old chap, and we might need to talk about retribution. See, yer man was dead on the floor with his head hanging at a funny angle, and Danielle needed her tools. And she had to do was get her face up to her hands. Now, you don't look like the sort that does too many pull-ups, so just let me tell you it's painful at the best of times and near impossible with your back to the wall. And all these gashes your lads had cut down her left arm, they all opened up again with the strain. Now, once is alright to make her bleed, but two… We _might_ need to be thinking about that coming back on you. I'm just letting you know. That one's in the post, maybe."

I am slowly, _emptily_ shaking my head. "I asked you where."

"Buried in the interlabial tissue, with a nail-grip edge positioned against the frenulum." I wait. He allows it. I wait again and in a single sudden bound he's thrown himself almost across the table with his upper lip drawn back, grotesque, pointing at the connective tissue between lip and gum, "Stuck up in there, y'ignorant _prick_." Then slithers back into his seat and explains, "No cavity search in the world'll show it up, carbon fibre so it doesn't get metal-detected and your mouth stops bleeding fastest of anywhere on the body so you lot didn't catch the damage. Good, isn't it? Anyway, after that, she just took off. Still in pretty decent shape. See, she exaggerated. You wanted her screaming so she screamed and you didn't do any more to her. Wonderful fucking animal…"

"She left you behind. How wonderful can she be?"

"Trust me, it hurt her more to leave me here than it would have done to take me with her." When this began, a long, long time ago, I would have thought myself clever and taken this for bravado, for cover. But it's nothing for the sort. His soft, proud glow is disgusting. That there could be something like warmth in him, over any living being, even that selfish sort and that it could be genuine, it _sickens_ me to my very soul.

He's so happy, content to talk all night about every neat little detail.

About how he's _beaten_ me.

Oh. But no, not quite. One fact gets through the fog, one thing I have, one thing I can hold up against him. My next question will do more than fill a gap for me, it'll leave one with him. A little hole to rot away. "And where is she now?"

"Ha. Rotterdam or anywhere, Mycroft. The rest of the job I left with her, run it how she would. Once she was out and away, that was all I needed to know."

"But she isn't?"

"Isn't what?"

"Out and away. They've got her trapped. Inside a steel perimeter. Still in the building, in fact. It's really only a matter of time before you get your neighbour back. She's still here."

Slowly, as if I've only confused him, _"Yeah_… So?" The reaction is odd and I am exhausted, and as I try to analyse it he begins to grin again. Doesn't quite believe me. I've said something incredibly stupid, it would seem. "Wait, you didn't think- Aw, surely not. _Surely_ not. I mean, I should _hope_ she's still in the building. She couldn't _possibly_ be finished yet. You only just _got _here."

Very quickly and very much on instinct, I get up and leave him there. I hear him laugh, again, before the door slams.

He talked. Distracted me with details and my own impossible rage. And in all of that, where was she?

Exactly where she was meant to be. Where she was always meant to end up.

Where she was meant to be. Moving with impunity down unobserved corridors because the men who watch the cameras are supporting the men at the gates and the men who take over from them are searching the place, ready to drag her back by the hair, all for show and all because I'm here.

The armed guard Anthea demanded is dead. There is a black filament, fine as a bone needle, sticking out of his eye where Mies disabled him. This one's neck was subsequently broken by hand, one would hope. Anthea herself is unconscious, but alive. There is blood and skin under her fingernails and it does me good to know that Mies at least bears a mark for this.

She found that strongbox, by the way.

Its lid is hanging open, and it is very much empty. The black folder is gone. The confidential file on Sherlock Holmes in the hands, more or less, of the most awful mind I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Gone. My file, brought here by me, gone.

The box is empty.

I return to him. I move no closer to him than the doorway. He is sitting back, with his hands folded in his lap, still turning his head, studying the air all about him with such absolute nonchalance you'd think we'd met for _tea_, damn him. And he says, "Now… Now that's all out of the way. Now we're all square and clear where we stand. I believe you had some proper questions for me?"


	17. Not Singing: Jim

It's childish as hell, but the urge to start up a rousing chorus of _You're Not Singing Anymore_ is _killing_ me. Mycroft himself hasn't come back yet, but every guard that's glowered at me all these weeks, every grunt and orderly or whatever they call them here, I get that _impossible_ impulse. But I'm trying to be dignified. Got my best prisoner-of-war face on. I bet when they shut down the Hanoi Hilton there was a _lot_ of _You're Not Singing_ going on.

No, wait, they were all Yanks. And they never shut it down they just… damn…

You know what I mean. Me, personally, you couldn't pay me to sit through a football match, but I've seen it, on advertisements, that moment when they score the goal? And there's that incredible roar of thousands of voices altogether, and everybody's on their feet, tears in the eyes, grown men hugging other grown men whom they do _not_ know but it's alright, it's alright, because… Yeah, you know what I mean.

He's gone to prepare himself. He thinks I don't know this. This is his decompression time, following defeat. Now, given, he'll be seeing that his pretty little companion is taken somewhere medically provisioned, and he'll be sending a dozen dozy hunters and their pointless pointers after Danielle and that _gorgeous_ black folder (which I _will_, mistake me not, be kissing the cover off when I see it next), but that's all incidental. Everybody knows the princess will waken in the end, and earthly hounds will never catch an enchanted thief.

I'm sorry; I can't carry on the football metaphor because I honestly know fuck all about football.

Anyway, somebody else could have taken care of all that. No, no, what Mycroft's gone _away_ for, is just to be away. I'm not sure he could have sat through what's happening here.

See, they're _conceding_ to me here. Having lost it all already, they have nothing to lose by _conceding_. I have, for instance, my own clothes back. Intact, too, down to the marker in my inside pocket. I can only presume they've tested that and concluded that it is incapable of firing any poison darts. Albeit they're a bit creased and musty from storage, but the fact is, I've got my suit back. Which is great, because it's very hard to play a cultured, elegant endgame without the old Armani armour on. Got the Tag back too, and I'm proud and you'll be proud of me, I lost track of time by only one day and seven hours. That is a _feat_. I'm getting a drink for that when I get out of here.

And a bacon sandwich. I can't tell you how a man in captivity can long for cremated strips of pig oozing grease into slowly melting butter and onward, soggying up a crisp outer toast layer until his fingers leave long dark imprints in the white side of the bread, oh dear _God_, that's going to be the best bacon sandwich ever eaten…

But I digress. I have also changed rooms, to a much brighter and much more conventional interrogation cell, _upstairs_, with decent chairs. And a two-way mirror, but the less said about that the better.

I have already made a mental note that facial expressions should place emphasis on the left-eye corner of my face. That's where some of my skin is still skin-coloured. Bit pale from being stuck underground. I'll cope with that.

Actually, quick recovery weekend at Moran's retirement taverna, _not_ a bad idea…

You know what else I've got? And it looks like a nice one, too. Cup of tea. Actual tea. They came in a couple of minutes ago and put everything on the table, milk and sugar and everything. And I don't take milk and sugar which makes me think…

Three, two, one, and there's the door handle going down. This is how you can tell you're getting to know someone far, far too well.

He's gotten changed. A shower, a shit and a shave, as they used to say where I'm from. Does you the world of good. And after all, Danielle's little prison break must have got him up out of bed. I told you, he went to prepare himself. That yellow tie is _awful_ though. He's learned nothing from me. I had such fecking hopes for us, but he hasn't learned a thing.

He's got another binder with him too. Different one. Skinnier one. For a second I think it might be the file on me, but when he opens it I see handwriting. I _told_ you, I keep telling you; he went to prepare.

Swot.

My _You're Not Singing_ craving is kicking in again. I only need to do it once. But I'm being dignified. Determinedly dignified. It's taking an awful lot, but I'm getting there. Be strong. Be frigging strong…

I start with, "How's the woman?" See? Dignity.

"Unharmed. The personnel who were _with_ her, however-"

"Were armed. That's fair game in our book."

He gives me the hairy eye like he wants to tell me just what exactly he thinks of _our_ book. I wish he would, because then I could remind him about the _other_ book that is currently _ours_. He doesn't, though, the spoilsport, he just says, "_Quite_," and that's all. Honest to God, I look at him and it reminds me I really must write my phone number on the back of my sense of humour in case I drop it somewhere.

Me, again, because apparently _nobody_ else is interested in finishing this, "So are we ready to talk about the real stuff now, Mycroft? We haven't had a proper conversation in a while. Back and forth, half-and-half. Both parties contributing."

"I want you to tell me about that tawdry little caper you ran right before Adler."

"The Greenwich job," I nod, "I know you do. Quid pro quo? Like the good old days?"

He knew this was coming. I look him over and he's sick with it, sinking in. It's nearly over for him now, though. It'll be alright. I want to tell him so, but I feel like that would be mixed messages, no? Anyway, I don't have much in mind, if I'm honest. What I needed from him is waiting outside for me. It's not like I'm to torture him or anything. "I don't see why not."

"Cheer up, mardy arse. It could be worse." He _starts_ to look at me, but stops himself. He was about to ask me _how_. I do what I can not to laugh. "I don't know, but I'm _sure_ it could. Nuclear fallout. That makes everything worse. If we were both glowing and bits were falling off us, surely that would be worse, hm? Feel better?"

This grumpy, humourless scion of the Stiff Upper Lip society grimaces over at me, "By 'Greenwich' I presume you're referring to your use of the pips."

"I am. Every job must have a title, and that was the first thing that fell into place."

"Oh, come now. Not the _first_ certainly."

"Talking about little Carl, Mr Holmes?"

"Well, you must have been-" I lift my eyes glare over at him, "Alright, we won't do precise ages. Too young for murder, certainly."

I shrug, "It's a career choice. Some might say four is too young to decide a little girl's going to be ballerina, but that's the age they start wrecking their skeletons for it. In terms of the craft, resourcefulness and ingenuity involved, I'd say any parent should be proud to have a child who can get away with murder at age… as a teenager."

Must admit, this is a very strange route for him to be taking. I thought I'd have to squash all the bragging in with a shoehorn, but he's just giving it to me over here. I know where he'll be wanting this to finish, but this is not a straight-line route. Maybe he's learned something after all.

Just to prove my point, he then continues, "There's the painting too. You don't knock out a fake of that calibre overnight."

I tell him everything about that one. Just in case. He might stop any minute now with the opportunities and I'll be back to the shoehorn plan again. And I do want him to know everything. Every detail. His brother, I didn't need to worry about him. He just looks at something and he sees all of this. Mycroft, I have to take the time and spell it out. About keeping people active in the art world all the time. Little spies looking for a dodgy collector or a decent heist-on-spec, for people who are planning something anyway and could be turned to my purposes. And how they found Wenceslas for me, and all I had to do was talk in her ear, in a couple of other ears, and then you watch that whole awful snobbish stratum just wet itself to get at that 'Vermeer'.

I tell him, so he'll know, so he'll hate me for it, "I didn't even know that gent done landscapes. I knew that one with the pearl earring."

So that he'll _know_, "Janus Cars had been in operation five years and had cleared twenty-six clients without a hitch. Could have gone on forever, that one, except I gave it to the Sweet Prince."

So that he'll know, "And _Prince_, well… mostly it was to get her off the telly, if I'm honest. But at the same time they came to me and… I'd actually deleted the message already. I said to myself, 'Meh, houseboy murder,' and I deleted it. And then I went back to it. Precisely _because_ it was a houseboy murder. Take the stupid and low and the everyday and turn it into something… _elegant_. Something…"

There's a word for it. You know that goal moment I was talking about before? I don't know how to describe this, but when you see that big mob all yelling and crying and hugging each other, this word is a layer just slightly above them, like a cloud, that transcends them as individuals and makes them wone. Without this, that moment or any like it could never exist. There's a word for this.

And Mycroft gives it to me. "Elevated," he says.

I nod and repeat to him, "Elevated." Then, because my word is better, "_Heightened_."

"Why?"

I shrug, "I have an artistic soul?"

"You misunderstand me. _Why_ that… 'job'? Those four in particular."

Is he joking? "Are you joking?" They… _Why?_ How can he sit there with a straight face and ask me- "Because they were _brilliant_! Because nobody else was _ever_ going to solve them!"

He sits back. He's trying to be smug again. Fondly I remember the days when Mycroft could be smug with me. When he still felt he had that level of control and understanding. He's searching for some corner of that feeling now to keep him steady and warm. It's not happening for him. He's searching for it and at the same time he's afraid to feel it. He knows I'll only drag him down again. Still, give the man his due, he tries it, "It's alright, isn't it, sitting behind the curtain? For a while, anyway. Then the respect of your friends and associates just wasn't enough anymore. You needed the world to pay attention to you."

Not really. Only the people worthy of knowing. And Mycroft already knew about me so, well, guess who that leaves…

That's what I _would_ be saying to him, only his little attempt at poking holes in me was so incredibly perfect, so totally enlightening that I've gone practically _blind_ with it. So perfect. World paying attention, respect of the known no longer enough, I should get it word for word so he'll know it was me. Dear God, I didn't even have to ask or guide him to it, dear, sweet _Jesus_…

I look up at him, pointing, "That's how I get the cops. Aw, you're _kidding_ me, Mycroft, that's been annoying me for _weeks_; how do I turn the cops against him, how do I discredit him there, how, how, _how_ do I get the cops, but that's it. That's the logic right there to get the cops. Aw, Old Spud, you _beauty_! I'd _hug_ you if I didn't think you'd have me shot."

"You'll be shot soon anyway."

"Alright, fine, remind me to hug you before I get shot, alright?" That's quite a good one, actually. When hell freezes over. When pigs fly. When I hug Mycroft Holmes. Must remember that one. I'm sorry, I can't tell give you anything more elaborate than that, I'm still _stunned_. That's like being in the woods during a storm, and the lightning doesn't strike you but starts you up a nice toasty campfire. The cops, solved, just like that… "You've put me in a good mood now. I was going to get you to give me something before we go on but… _fuck_ it. Go ahead, what were you saying?"

"What do you mean about the police?"

"Ah, nothing, nothing. You'll see soon enough. Go on. You were about to have a pop at me for being arrogant or something, I reckon."

"No. I was going to ask you why you felt the need to approach Sherlock with a _résumé_."

_Ooh_… nasty little gambit, that. You have to admire it. Some animals, once they get bit, they lie down and die. At the very least, they run from the thing that bit them. I know where he's taking this and he's looking a fight. He's looking a real, vicious scrap. Red in tooth and claw, as it were.

You have to admire it. You have to laugh. I'll answer him in a minute but first, with restraint, not singing, with _absolute_ dignity, I have to grin, "You only sing when you're winning, Mycroft."

* * *

[Apologies for the delay, my pretties. I've been getting these closing scenes just right for you, making sure I don't miss anything, making sure I do them justice. Thanks for bearing with.]


	18. Not A Word: Mycroft

"A _résumé_?" he balks.

"Absolutely. Just as a casual observer-"

"-There's nothing casual about you, sweetheart."

"-it seems clear that the whole fiasco was no more than an elaborate audition piece." That's done it. That's put him on the back foot. It's the first time since the woman escaped and... Who am I to pretend? It is the first in a long time. The sting of it is all the sharper for its long absence. The places where he had healed are yet tender enough to feel it worst. It changes his mood, and though the change is for the worse I am nevertheless glad to have finally been able to change it.

Where great victories have been so sparse we must learn to cling to the petty ones.

There had been a joy in him, graciously restrained, but he could barely hold it. On a heartbeat, now, that dies. Or perhaps, less encouragingly, it has simply been momentarily tamed.

"You may answer yourself best by answering me, as the blind beggar said to the rich man, and I'm owed a bit of an answer by now, I should think. You've had a bit of a free pass so far, I should think. Besides, you think you've got it all figured out, me _and_ him, and I want to be here and watching your face when you spot how wrong you've been."

There's no snap, no wit. His speeches have turned careful and measured. And while I know this to be a warning sign, though question is precisely what he wants me to do... "Answer what?"

"One thing I really do want to hear before I go." With a shrug, with clear gaze, with absolute honesty and _hope_, "Came here to ask you, really, Mycroft... How'd he take it?" It is perhaps the only question he has ever asked me in the genuine pursuit of an answer. Not to hurt or manipulate me, not for the sake of his meticulous and masochistic little plan, but because he wants to know. If ever there were a time to walk away and leave him here, to lock the door on this room and, maybe, in the interests of safety and expediency, simply have it bricked up and forgotten about. It could be that he sees me thinking this, in that same paranoid way I've come to live with. It could be he just sees me hesitate; "Aw, no. No, Mycroft, not now, don't clam up _now_ when you've told me everything already, no, I left it to the end. I left it to the end because it would be too late for you to clam up on me and you'd be too sick at heart to lie, I've made it easy for you, now just _answer_."

"In the face of such _wonderful_ desperation... why _would_ I?"

"Because there is yet a chance for you to come out of this intact. And because they never caught that gunman fired the shot outside this building last night, did they?"

"A promise and a threat together. How delightfully confused."

"Well, it was just going to be the carrot, but I thought you'd feel more at home if I shoved the stick up its arse. I should just point out, by refusing to tell me you're telling me you don't want to tell me, which is telling me everything."

Can't fault his logic. And for once I have nothing to offer that might distract him. My only conclusion is that my silence can give him no details and is therefore preferable. The only result is that my silence continues.

There used to be a threat in silence. On either side. Either party could have called it all off at any time simply be refusing to participate. I always knew this. And yet I went on, and worked harder. I had thought my ultimate rewards might be somewhat different to this rather quiet closing scene.

"He loved it, didn't he?" Moriarty says. The corner of a smile starting to edge back in. "I knew he would. He loved it, the slag. Crime-slag, by the way. I'm not going to sit here and insult your little brother, not at this stage in the game... How often do you see him smile, Biggest Holmes? And I don't mean that little lip twitch he does when he's being snarky. Or the other one he does so people will think he's fine. I mean properly smile. Did I make him smile, Mycroft? I exist but to serve. Did I make him smile?" Oh yes. Excited him too, more than I've seen since he still held an interest in research science. "Is there a day in his secret diary where the title's written in the special purple gel pen with a big bubble round it and loads of little hearts and stars and it says 'Best Case Ever'?"

"Well, what do you think?..."

In the face of all the venom I could summon he barks sick laughter, claps his hands just once and keeps them joined as if in prayer. "I _knew_ it. The first time you're really watching somebody it can be hard to tell, but I knew it, I _knew_ it. I just wanted to hear it from somebody who's had him under surveillance a lot longer than me. Actually, on the subject, did he ever appear back home? Remember empty Baker Street? The clock channel? Can't stop thinking about that." I open my mouth to offer the murderous evasions he won't want to hear, the tortures, but he adds, "Safe home from Dartmoor, I mean?"

To ask is to play to his whims. Not to ask is to live forever with just a little too much proof that he has means more than I or any other should have. "How could you possibly know that?"

"Danielle. She got all the reports before she came in. That's what we had to talk about before she left."

"No. No. She didn't know we were coming for her. _You_ could have, certainly, that time, but not her, not then."

"Why? Just because you were only winging it? 'Fake it 'til you make it', Mycroft, it only works if you're a hell of a lot better at faking it than you are. Of course we knew. From day one. I said to her and Sebastian, 'Who's coming in to save me, come the time?' Sebastian didn't believe in your big black folder any more than he does fairies... Wait, no, bad example... Werewolves, so it had to be her. And I said, when the Ross Kemp goes off, be ready for it."

"'_Ross Kemp_'?"

"The gangs. That big job when you decided you'd have to really push me by picking up one of my associates."

Any other subject, any other criminal, I wouldn't believe it. I would call it an incredibly clever and elaborate cover up, an excellent use of the known facts to create a sense of impenetrable bravura. Any other subject.

To Moriarty I say, "How long have you been planning this?"

"Including the research? Couple of years. Maybe three."

We were arrogant, or perhaps just naive, not to see it. Now that it's before me it's only logical; of course he meant for us to take him. The message that gave up Bond Air was traceable. This in itself is a mammoth enough inconsistency that even our lowest clerk should have seen it. The general rule is that a criminal will always, eventually, make a mistake. We wait for that mistake. When it comes, we seize upon it, and never once do we stop to consider whether in fact it might not have been a mistake at all.

In addition, the message that gave up Bond Air did exactly that.

"You gave up millions in governmental blackmail to make me come after you."

"Yeah. Honestly; between that, and the Vermeer, and the cost of observation these days, and paying the cab driver, and Corcoran, and Shikra, and fuck knows who else, do you have _any_ idea what an expensive habit you Holmes boys are?"

"Which of us is confused, Moriarty?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Whose attention is it you crave? Mine or my brother's? Everything you say contradicts the last."

That stops him, but only while he formulates his answer. We've gone beyond the script now. These aren't the questions he planned to answer and thus the answers have not been planned. But he has no real rouble answering, nor takes any issue with the question. "While we're sharing, I might as well tell you... I got stuck into your brother to get to you. I presume you knew that. As well as that there was... No, never mind, you don't need to know about that and it makes no odds to you. But the more I got to know him- Mycroft, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry to say this, but he's just more _fun_ than you are. You never played back. He can't wait to play. And I sympathize, I'm sorry for him, because I know what it's like when the world is too small for your brain and all that it can do. I'd never say it to his face because he'd hate me for it but... Sherlock _needs_ me. Not in a petty, clingy, human way. None of this 'angels with one wing' shite. He just needs me to exist."

"As you need him."

Without hesitation, "Yeah, maybe. I told him before, I'll tell you now; we were _meant_ for each other."

I had meant for my comment to throw him off balance, for there to be just _one_ admission he did not want to make, but there it is, and it disgusts me. Of all the unbearable delusions he's brought to me since this began, surely this is the most heinous, and my reaction matches it, visceral, rising like bile upward from my stomach. I tell him, "Never."

"Stop me," he shrugs. "Stop _him_."

"There will be no more _games_," I tell him. Even should I be proven somehow incapable of putting you in your grave, a proof, I assure you, which will not come to pass, you don't have the only copy of the contents of that folder. I could put him so far beyond your reach you'd never hear his name again."

He begins to nod, looking forlornly down at his hands. For a moment I almost dare to believe something of what I've said is sinking in. He _begins_ to nod, and then stops, and brings his eyes sharply and directly to mine. "Not before we did."

The more personal leaves from the file, I see now, were just a bonus to him. He did it for that other sheet, the one that requires only one more signature. One more easily-gotten signature.

He continues, "And we won't do it all quiet, all dead-of-night and tinted windows like you would. I'm thinking red-top tabloids, national coverage. _Genius Detective Sectioned_. And better yet, _For Good Of Country_. That's the only reason you do anything, isn't it, Mycroft? I'd have to tell them that. When it all came out about your name and who you are, what you do for a living... How I've been tearing the place apart from inside a cell these two months and you never told anybody, because you wanted to ask me if I had designs on your most prized asset." Looking almost bored with the explanation, he shrugs over at me. "Do I have to go any farther with this? We've got you. We've always had you. Do I have to go any farther?"

"You in exchange for the file."

Laughing, as though it were the most ridiculous thing in the world, "What? _No_. You're not getting it _back_... No, sorry, there was no carrot that time. That was just a stick. You release me _or_ that's what happens!" He laughs until he doubles over, until he traps a broken rib and hisses, trails off in a giggle. It's hard to know what to say. To give in so quickly would be unforgivably, but my mind races and finds nothing but locked doors, shut in on itself, entirely closed off. He looks up from hanging over the table, looks me in the eye. "Is it three o'clock yet? Must be."

He's wearing his watch again. He doesn't need to ask.

"Mycroft, do me a favour; go and call your own house. And then call me a cab on your way ba-" He can't finish, laughs until he wheezes. The instruction is so frighteningly specific I can't but obey. Chasing me out of the room, "_You're not singing, you're not singing, you're not singing anymore_."

I could simply step outside and use my mobile phone, but I want to be away from him. Paying no attention to those who would gather around me, who would talk, who would _help_, as if they could, I go to the other end of the building, borrow an office and sit a while at the desk. More than a while. But the time drifts towards ten past three and I feel the urgency of his words, of the timing. Twelve hours since I was wakened, since the woman escaped. _Three o'clock. _Twelve hours, almost exactly. There's significance in that.

As if she was _given_ twelve hours.

I call home.

On the first ring, there is an answer.

"Hello, Goldilocks." Mies, sweetly purring, "Are you alone? Can you speak candidly?"

"I would to you."

"Patience, love. I'll give you my private number for the dirty talk. For now, I presume you know why I'm by your phone."

"Because it's the one place they wouldn't look for you."

"And the best place to book a courier in your name. He's on his way. Release James Moriarty in the next ten minutes, or the documents go with him." Twelve hours to collect a third signature, to get clear of the hounds, to reach my private residence. _Book a courier_. Damn them all.

"There are people on their way to you right now. Your courier would never make it off the front path."

"Make a bet. You make a bet and I'll nip down the hall and make a copy." A pause. Not a single word left. "Five minutes, Mr Holmes. We're watching." The pop of the line going dead.

Then silence, in a borrowed office. A silence which belongs to neither him nor I, but which is nonetheless loaded with far darker threat.

Not a question left, and not an answer either. Not a single word left. In all of this, in all those words, after all of it, not a single word left, except those which are, all at once, a release, and an admission of defeat, and the words to end it, and the words to concede.

Not a single word left. None that I like, at any rate.

[A/N – You guys have been so great. The support was insane. From the bottom of my black little heart, and both of my boys', many thanks for being here. It's been a pleasure to serve

- Hearts – Sal.]


End file.
